dying – Mia McPherson's On The Wing Photography

Plastic Netting Will Kill This Pied-billed Grebe

By Mia McPherson|December 7th, 2023|Categories: Birds, Environment, Pied-billed Grebes, Salt Lake County, Utah|Tags: adult, autumn, bill, dying, entanglement, fall, grebe, grebes, netting, nonbreeding plumage, park, Pied-billed Grebe, plastic, plastic netting, Podilymbus podiceps, pond, starvation, starve, urban, water|

Plastic netting will kill this Pied-billed Grebe unless myself or someone else can capture the grebe and remove the netting. The grebe will starve to death.

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Loggerhead Shrike On A Wild Rose In Front of The Dying Great Salt Lake

By Mia McPherson|November 16th, 2021|Categories: Birds, Box Elder County, Loggerhead Shrikes, Utah|Tags: adult, autumn, climate change, climate crisis, desert, dry lake bed, dying, fall, Great Salt Lake, Lanius ludovicianus, Loggerhead Shrike, mud flats, perched, playa, Rosa woodsii, rose, shore, shrike, shrikes, water consumption, water levels, wild rose, Woods' Rose|

Had I taken these Loggerhead Shrike photos four to five years ago the background wouldn't have been dry lake bed. It would have shown water. Precious, life-giving water.

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Franklin’s Gull Feasting On Brine Flies Plus News About The Great Salt Lake

By Mia McPherson|July 25th, 2021|Categories: Antelope Island State Park, Birds, Davis County, Franklin's Gulls, Utah|Tags: adult, brine flies, chasing, conservation, drying, dying, eating, Ephydra cinerea, Ephydra hians, feasting, flies, foraging, Franklin's Gull, Great Salt Lake, gull, gulls, hatch year, hypersaline, hypersaline lake, immature, juvenile, lake, Leucophaeus pipixcan, rocks, scooping, shore, shoreline, summer, walking, water, water levels, young|

While Franklin's Gulls are in northern Utah for their breeding season brine flies are an important food source for the adults and their young and are a part of their breeding success here in the Great Basin.

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Black-capped Chickadee In The Wasatch Mountains

By Mia McPherson|August 11th, 2020|Categories: Birds, Black-capped Chickadees, Morgan County, Utah, Wasatch Mountains|Tags: adult, Black-capped Chickadee, branches, calling, canyons, chickadee, chickadees, dead, dying, mountains, perched, Poecile atricapillus, summer, willow, willows|

I saw and heard Black-capped and Mountain Chickadees yesterday morning but only this Black-capped Chickadee came in close enough for me to photograph.

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The Great Salt Lake is D(r)ying and Utah’s Water Crisis

By Mia McPherson|April 26th, 2015|Categories: American White Pelicans, Antelope Island State Park, Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, Birds, Black-necked Stilts, Box Elder County, Brine Flies, Conservation, Davis County, Eared Grebes, Environment, Franklin's Gulls, Northern Shovelers, Utah, Wilson's Phalaropes|Tags: American White Pelican, bird photography, birds, Black-necked Stilt, brine fly, brine shrimp, climate change, climate crisis, drought, drying, duck, ducks, dying, Eared Grebe, Great Basin hub, Great Salt Lake, grebe, grebes, habitat, hyper saline, hypersaline, migration, Northern Shoveler, Pacific Flyway, pelican, pelicans, phalarope, phalaropes, record low, shoveler, shovelers, water crisis, Wilson's Phalarope|

One thing I know for certain is that we can't drink dust.

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