A Birding We Shall Go!

May 14, 2026

Natalie flew in a couple of days in advance of our journey south to help Xavier move out of his dorm at ASU. This allowed us to spend a full day birding by our house. Natalie was pretty jet-lagged from visiting Larina and Bob in Portugal, but we both put our game faces on, got up early, and put in close to a 12-hour day.

Dinner the evening before our big birding day – tribute to needlessly abandoned, Baby Lakota Schenk.

Cats eagerly waiting for Natalie to come out and entertain them.

Our birding consisted of visiting the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, Willard Bay State Park, Antelope Island State Park and then Utah Lake State Park the following morning and finally, Marble Canyon/Navajo Bridge to see the California Condors on the way from Kanab, UT to Phoenix, AZ.

Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge

Willard Bay State Park

Utah Lake State Park with Mt. Timpanogos in the background.

At Navajo Bridge where we ended up seeing 7 juvenile California Condors and 2 adults just hanging out on the rocks below the bridge.

We were able to use a couple of great birding apps owned by Cornell University to see what birds had been sighted at the locations we were to visit (eBird) and identify unseen birds by their calls (Merlin.)

eBird app

Merlin app

A great trip, and she added the following birds to her list and potential calendar candidates:

Yellow-headed Blackbird
Cinnamon Teal
Western Kingbird
Long-billed Curlew
Black-necked Stilt
White-faced Ibis
Western Grebe
Clark’s Grebe
Forster’s Tern
Franklin’s Gull
Bullock’s Oriole
Lark Sparrow
Swainson’s Hawk
Eared Grebe
Western Meadowlark
Green-tailed Towhee
California Condor

Here are a few photos that Natalie took – might be a preview of the 2027 Calendar? Thanks, Nat – great photos!