358. Woodhouse's Scrub-Jay

Date         November 25, 2024

Location    Grand Canyon National Park, AZ

This picture is a screen grab of a video I took with my phone. Yes, with my phone!

After the Rufous-crowned Sparrow, we started the hike back up the Bright Angel Trail. Which, by the way, is probably the most arduous hiking I've ever done, at least that I can remember. Anyway, I heard a bird in a tree down the trail from me and turned back to investigate. This was a pretty easy ID.

The video capture shows him flying past me from left to right as he flew up the trail to another tree just above me on the trail. You can see the beautiful canyon wall in the background.

Cornell: Woodhouse's Scrub-Jay

357. Rufous-crowned Sparrow

Date         November 25, 2024

Location    Grand Canyon National Park, AZ

This was on the Bright Angel trail, down from the South Rim.

Mieka and I had stopped to rest at the 3-mile rest house, preparing for the climb back up. I was sitting on a boulder at the base of the house, eating something. I saw two birds flitting about the bushes nearby, probably about 10 yards away. I managed to pull out my binoculars and was getting a good look when they started flying toward me.

It eventually landed on an adjacent boulder not three feet away, just out of arm's reach. My guess is that they feed off of crumbs from all the hikers eating and resting there, so they've gotten bold. I was able to get a good look without binoculars. He stayed there for a few seconds before flying off. Range and habitat also fit perfectly.

This was the second sparrow of the year (other was Golden-crowned in Alaska) that basically fell in my lap as I was sitting on the ground eating.

Cornell: Rufous-crowned Sparrow

356. Stilt Sandpiper

Date         October 5, 2024

Location    Nygren Wetland Preserve, Rockton, IL

The photo above is the actual bird, as taken by a cell phone camera through my spotting scope lens.

Logan and I agonized over this one for quite some time. I even submitted to the What's this bird? page on Facebook. The consensus was Stilt Sandpiper. After considering range and everything else, we felt like this was a solid ID.

Cornell: Stilt Sandpiper

355. Chukar

Date         July 31, 2024

Location    Bucks Corners, OR

This is an approximate location, as we had a long travel day that day to Portland and I didn't make note of exactly where we were. We were definitely in Oregon, well before arriving at John Day Fossil Beds.

I was driving on a two-way highway in rural country (farms and fields and occasional small towns) and saw a bird walking on the side of the road. I was pretty sure that it was a game bird of some kind, perhaps another grouse. Once we stopped and got a good look, it was pretty unmistakable.

Cornell: Chukar

354. Rock Ptarmigan

Date         July 13, 2024

Location    Lake Clark National Park, AK

Toward the evening, as I was about to turn in for the night after seeing a scoter fly right past me as I brushed my teeth by the river, our guide Colleen called out to me that there was a ptarmigan in camp. I yelled back that I would be right over. Fortunately, they tend to freeze in place like rabbits, so I grabbed my binoculars and made it over to her before it left.

We needed help identifying it. I had not brought my field guide, but Josh had one, so she went and fetched it while I stayed in sight of the bird, ostensibly to keep it from moving on.

When she returned, we had to discuss the markings at length, probably for about 10 minutes, before finally deciding on Rock.

Cornell: Rock Ptarmigan

353. Golden-crowned Sparrow

Date         July 13, 2024

Location    Lake Clark National Park, AK

It was a rainy afternoon on the shore of Turquoise Lake (the "Delta" shore on the east side), and I was munching on a sandwich, hunkered down under a tarp that had been reduced in size by half the day before due to high winds. My guide Josh was there with me. A small bird hopped through the bushes and tundra, passing within 10 feet from where we were sitting. It was a male in breeding plumage, not something you're going to see unless you're way up north in the summer.

Cornell: Golden-crowned Sparrow

352. Pine Grosbeak

Date         July 9, 2024

Location    Katmai National Park, AK

This was the end of our last day at Katmai, and our boat back to King Salmon had left us behind even though we were just five minutes late back from the bus tour. So we had some time to sit around and wait for the next boat.

Part of the reason for being late in the first place was because I was filing a report on some stolen equipment -- someone had taken our bear fence that we'd left in the gear cache. Mieka convinced me to go back to the campsite's cache just in case I had left in there. I was sure that I hadn't, but we had nothing else to do so I decided to go. "Who knows," I said, "maybe I'll see a new bird on the way."

So as I walked the short hike back to the campsite, I spied a large reddish bird perched toward the bottom of a tree. The first impression I got was that it was like a robin or a cardinal but not either one -- the red was the wrong shade. I had brought my binoculars along just in case, so I whipped them out barely in time to get a good look at him before he flew off.

The bear fence was not at the campsite of course, but it was certainly worth the walk, just as I had jokingly suggested.

Cornell: Pine Grosbeak