Champions of the Flyway!

Friday, July 15, 2011

Yellowstone, June 2011 - avian highlights



Cassin's Finch - a brief stop allowed time for a final mosey into an area of open pine forest, and by sheer luck, a small group of these hard-to-find finches dropped in almost at my feet, fed for several minutes, and were on their way into the wilderness




Dark-eyed Junco - as mentioned previously, local birds are of the Pink-sided subspecies, which occupy a limited breeding range pretty much restricted to eastern Montana and north-west Wyoming


male Lazuli Bunting - unmissable


Vesper Sparrow - somewhat more missable


a mixed flock of Barrow's Goldeneyes and Lesser Scaup on Yellowstone Lake. The former were new for me, and I'd imagined I'd struggle to find them on remote mountain lakes - as it happened, they were far and away the commonest duck species, with many hundreds present



Barrow's Goldeneyes


Osprey getting a kicking from a local Raven




Gray Jays (of the pale-headed, Rocky mountains subspecies); another species I'd expected problems locating, and so it was, until basically hand-feeding a small party at a picnic site