![\"gyrfalcon](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/gyrfalcon-2590-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/p>\nI’ve said it many times, I’m a bird photographer not a traditional\u00a0birder. I don’t keep lists of any kind. I keep a pair of binoculars in my pickup but\u00a0seldom use them (I use my telephoto lens for scoping birds). I don’t own a spotting scope. I’m not a twitcher (one who travels long distances to tick a new species off their list).\u00a0Bird ID skills are significantly less important to me than photography skills. I much prefer to get a great image of a common species than to simply see\u00a0a rare or unusual\u00a0bird. I’m much more\u00a0interested in bird behaviors than I am in how many species I’ve seen or a sighting of a rare or unusual bird. I rarely use a field guide in the field though they get plenty of use at home while I’m reviewing images.<\/p>\n
I admire the dedication and skill sets of\u00a0many birders but that’s just not my focus.<\/p>\n
But an incident earlier this year gave me a taste of the excitement birders must feel when they observe a rare species and have that sighting accepted by the birding community (I reported this\u00a0event on my blog when it happened but there’s been a new development…).<\/p>\n
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On February 11 of this year I was\u00a0driving\u00a0west on the Antelope Island causeway when a large raptor flew up low and behind me on the right side of my pickup. My first glimpse of the bird was a\u00a0fleeting one through the upper right hand corner of my windshield. I suspected it was a falcon\u00a0but it appeared to be too large for a Peregrine or Prairie so I was at a loss. Mia (who was riding in the back seat and is better at ID than I am)\u00a0couldn’t see it at first but when she eventually did she\u00a0wondered out loud if it could possibly be a Gyrfalcon but by then it was too far ahead for anything near a positive ID.<\/p>\n
Then the bird veered to the south, crossed the road and flew out to the mudflats (which it’s doing here)…<\/p>\n
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![\"gyrfalcon](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/gyrfalcon-2608-ron-dudley.jpg\")
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and landed almost a\u00a0quarter-mile away (all three of these images were taken at an effective 1120mm\u00a0with a 500 mm lens, attached 1.4 teleconverter and cropped sensor camera and are huge crops – about 13% of the original image).<\/p>\n
We still didn’t know what species this bird was. We both knew the Gyrfalcon possibility was an extremely long shot and we wanted a better look at the bird so I drove toward the island and then came back, hoping the bird might come in closer to hunt with my pickup gone.<\/p>\n
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![\"gyrfalcon](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/gyrfalcon-2717-ron-dudley.jpg\")
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When I returned\u00a0the bird was still out there on the mud but soon\u00a0it took off heading northwest, crossed the causeway\u00a0far in front of me to the west\u00a0and disappeared in the direction of Fremont Island.<\/p>\n
Closer inspection of our images eventually\u00a0revealed the bird to be a juvenile gray morph Gyrfalcon. Once the ID was confirmed Mia reported the sighting to UBird (something I typically can’t do because I’m driving). Later I reported the sighting to the Utah Bird Record Committee but didn’t hear back if the sighting was accepted or not so I largely forgot about it.<\/p>\n
Then\u00a0three days ago\u00a0I received an email from Craig Fosdick, secretary of the Utah Birds Record Committee, saying that my sighting had been reviewed and unanimously accepted by the committee. Craig stated that “this is only the seventh Gyrfalcon record for Utah and the first in 13 years<\/em>“.<\/p>\n To be perfectly honest I was quite surprised by the thrill I felt to have seen this bird in the first place and then to have the sighting accepted by the committee. And I’ve never been so happy to have such poor-quality images of a bird.<\/p>\n Perhaps there’s some birder in me after all…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve said it many times, I’m a bird photographer not a traditional birder. But an incident earlier this year gave me a taste of the excitement birders must feel when they observe a rare species and have that sighting accepted by the birding community. <\/p>\nRon<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n