Visitor from the Desert Southwest

On my usual birding walk at South Platte Park this morning, sightings were unremarkable except for a large number of yellow warblers and the presence of an ash-throated flycatcher.  The latter bird, rare along the Colorado Front Range, is a summer resident of the Desert Southwest, from western Colorado to California and from the northern Great Basin to Mexico.

Unlike most flycatchers, ash-throats generally snare their prey from foliage or directly on the ground; large insects, such as beetles and grasshoppers, are favored but they also consume berries and small lizards.  Nests are placed in the cavities of trees, fenceposts or nest boxes and two broods are raised each year.  Wandering widely during migrations, ash-throated flycatchers sometimes turn up on the East Coast; most winter in coastal regions of Mexico and Central America.

This morning's visitor was feeding on a wooded hillside, west of Eaglewatch Lake; on their home summer range, they are best found in pinyon-juniper or mesquite woodlands, along desert streams or in the canyons of desert ranges.  Adapting well to human habitation, ash-throated flycatchers are gradually expanding their territory and may soon be more common along the Front Range.

Crossing the Great Basin

West of Salt Lake City, Interstate 80 passes between the north end of the Oquirrh Range and the Great Salt Lake.  As we drove west, black-necked stilts were feeding in the roadside shallows, cliff swallows swooped about the highway bridges and flocks of California gulls moved across the morning sky.  Throughout western Utah, flat plains, remnants of Lake Bonneville, alternated with stark fault-block ranges, many of which were capped with snow.

In eastern Nevada, the ranges were more numerous and the intervening valleys were both rolling and green, covered by sage grasslands that were grazed by horses, cattle and pronghorn.  Just west of Wells, the highway began to follow the Humboldt River, passing the majestic Ruby Mountains; we would parallel that river all the way to Lovelock, where it enters its terminal sink.  Beyond that point, the greenery of eastern Nevada gave way to desert landscape, characterized by vast lake flats where American avocets patrolled the alkaline pools.  This low desert, lying within the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada, ended at Fernley where we climbed into the Sierra foothills along the Truckee River.  Passing through Reno, we continued westward and upward on Interstate 80 before turning south to Lake Tahoe.

Backed by the high spine of the Sierra Nevada, this beautiful lake is renowned for both its resorts and its fabulous alpine scenery; after a full day on the road,  it seemed like a great place to spend the night.  Tomorrow we head into the California Cascades.