Tree Swallows Nesting In The Uinta Mountains
Tree Swallows and other birds should be nesting in the Uinta Mountains by now and I am itching to hop into my Jeep to drive up there to find them.
Tree Swallows and other birds should be nesting in the Uinta Mountains by now and I am itching to hop into my Jeep to drive up there to find them.
This morning is cloudy and gray but seven years ago today it was bright, the air was crisp and the fall colors of the Front Range of the Wasatch Mountains were in their full glory.
I was in the high Uinta Mountains near Washington Lake when I spotted this young Dark-eyed Junco and I was able to take a few images of it before it flew away.
Because of our wetter than normal spring it seems that the chokecherries are doing well, extremely well. Many of the chokecherry branches are bending low because of the weight of the blossoms.
The other bird I photographed that day in the high Uintas was a gorgeous male Yellow Warbler foraging in an aspen tree very close to where I sat inside a "mobile" blind at the edge of a dirt road.
I love seeing the Aspen eyes of the forest upon me and I find myself happy to photograph them whenever I can.
I spotted a flash of black, white and red as a bird landed in the aspen tree that was closest to me above where the wrens and swallows are nesting and realized that a male Red-naped Sapsucker had flown in and was foraging for food in the buds of the aspen.
While I photographed nesting House Wrens in the High Uintas the last day of May I also photographed nesting Tree Swallows in the same Aspen tree in a cavity a bit lower on the trunk.
I laughed again when I saw this photo on my camera LCD, the Moose was reaching to grab more willow leaves but was also keeping an eye on me in the mobile blind while his "beard" swung like the clapper of a bell.
I was delighted to photograph a lovely, little Dark-eyed Junco juvenile perched in a conifer near Washington Lake which is not too far from Trial Lake and the Mirror Lake Highway.
This male Red-naped Sapsucker was photographed last year in the high Uintas, a mountain range that is east of Salt Lake City and the Wasatch Mountains I can see from where I live.
It seemed like every where I looked I saw little chipmunks scurrying around on the ground and climbing in the scrub oaks that dot the western side of the Wasatch Mountains.
One of the Uinta Ground Squirrels stood up and simply looked around right on the shoulder of the road and I couldn't resist photographing it.
Finding Red-naped Sapsuckers feeding chicks at a nesting cavity in the Uintas made my day!
Near the camp site one afternoon I could hear tiny peeping sounds in the pines and I went to investigate, the sweet calls were coming from these juvenile Flycatchers.