{"id":86724,"date":"2020-06-26T06:21:35","date_gmt":"2020-06-26T12:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=86724"},"modified":"2020-06-26T06:29:50","modified_gmt":"2020-06-26T12:29:50","slug":"green-tailed-towhees-and-lamenting-habitat-lost-to-little-dell-reservoir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/26\/green-tailed-towhees-and-lamenting-habitat-lost-to-little-dell-reservoir\/","title":{"rendered":"Green-tailed Towhees And Lamenting Habitat Lost to Little Dell Reservoir"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘Progress’ ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Recently I’ve posted several closeup shots of male Green-tailed Towhees singing on territory from serviceberry bushes. They seem to have a special affinity for serviceberry perches but it goes without saying that I can’t always get close.<\/p>\n

I found this bird on the same spot in the same serviceberry on several recent back-to-back trips to the mountains but he was far from the road and I made no attempt to approach him on foot so he’s small in the frame. Instead of fighting the out of focus branch in front of him I decided to work with it so I took this shot vertically and cropped the image accordingly.<\/p>\n

It may not have much appeal for viewers and I understand that but it certainly shows the towhee in typical mixed shrub habitat.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

But like most birds Green-tailed Towhees have no aversion to man made perches and this one habitually perches on a weathered buck and rail fence. Thankfully this species can and does adapt to moderate human-caused habitat modification.<\/p>\n

But there are some kinds of habitat modifications that no bird can adapt to.<\/p>\n

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I’ve mention in the past that Green-tailed Towhees were my ‘spark bird’. In the spring of 1969 I took an Ornithology class from the legendary Dr. William H. Behle<\/a><\/span><\/span> at the University of Utah. As part of the lab for that class I was required to choose a study species and spend time with it in the field and then write up a report on what I’d observed.<\/p>\n

With guidance from the teaching assistant for that class I chose the Green-tailed Towhee as my study species and spent many spring and early summer mornings in a delightful little valley in the Wasatch Mountains east of Salt Lake City observing towhees and other birds and wildlife going about their business.<\/p>\n

It was that class that got me seriously hooked on birds and the Green-tailed Towhee has been a favorite of mine for over a half century now.<\/p>\n

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My towhee study area is now engulfed by Little Dell Reservoir, an impoundment constructed in the early 90’s for flood control and to supply culinary water for the Salt Lake Valley.<\/p>\n

I spent countless hours down there in the bottom of the valley in the mixed shrub-steppe habitat required by towhees during nesting season. But today most of what’s left on the steep slopes higher up is the dense scrub oak habitat used by far fewer species of birds and other wildlife. And certainly not by Green-tailed Towhees.<\/p>\n

The 250 acres of mixed habitat at the bottom of the valley vanished almost overnight.<\/p>\n

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This is the dam that backed up Dell Creek and created Little Dell Reservoir. When I photograph Green-tailed Towhees in the area where I’ve been finding them in recent years I have to drive right past Little Dell Reservoir on my way home. I suppose it’s a pretty little body of water to most who see it but my feelings about it are decidedly mixed.<\/p>\n

Progress? I don’t think so.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘Progress’ ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86726,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,8,16,3404],"tags":[5210,1441,5206,5205,5208,1442,284,3396,5209,1387,311,5207],"class_list":["post-86724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","category-photography-ethics","category-green-tailed-towhees-birds","tag-dell-creek","tag-green-tailed-towhee","tag-habitat-loss","tag-little-dell-reservoiir","tag-ornithology-class","tag-pipilo-chlorurus","tag-singing","tag-spark-bird","tag-study-species","tag-university-of-utah","tag-utah-2","tag-william-h-behle"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/green-tailed-towhee-1547-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-myM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}