“Look at this pretty rock,” exclaimed a six-year-old girl as she picked up a beautifully-designed piece of wonderstone from a hillside littered with shards of rocks. She had an eye to recognize the “pretties” as she helped her brothers, sisters, mom and dad fill a bucket of rocks to be tumbled and polished. After the […]
SAGE JUNCTION — With the late spring, I did not locate a Burrowing owl until late April, almost three weeks later than what usually happens. It was located between Sage Junction and Hamer, along the Old Butte Highway; I did not see his mate show up until early May. I guessed that she did not […]
A flash of orange, yellow and black drew my attention as I walked out to my rock shed to cut some rocks after a trip to watch the sage grouse on their leks. It was a male Bullock’s oriole eating on a suet cake I had put out for the downy woodpeckers while a female […]
ROBERTS — It is time to start watching for shorebirds on area flooded fields, lakes and ponds. During last Monday’s rainstorm, Market Lake had some small flocks of American avocets, black-necked stilts, long-billed curlews and white-faced ibis join a smattering of killdeer near the ponds. Later in the week willets, spotted sandpipers and greater yellowlegs […]
As I traveled down the road bordering the west ponds of Market Lake, the first ducks I happened across were seven of the beautiful, streamlined Red-breasted mergansers that had arrived from Mexico. In the last week, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game had opened the road since the elk had moved off the wildlife […]