I can never tell if the anachronism of daylight savings is ironic. Maybe that’s due to my newly syncopated circadian rhythm. Or maybe it’s all a dream. Or perhaps, it’s somewhere in between.

Wild About Utah: the natural ebbs of the world

Of all the lovely wildflowers to enjoy in Utah, Indian paintbrush has to top my list. The nickname “prairie fire” is an accurate one, highlighting the variety of colors we find: reds, oranges, yellows, pinks, purples and sometimes a mixture of two.

Wild About Utah: brushes

As I watch waves of migrant birds move through our valley, beginning in mid-July with rufous hummingbirds and a few early shorebirds, followed by raptors pouring over the Wellsvilles mountains in mid-August, then September when many of our songbirds head for the tropics, and lastly in November come the waterfowl- ducks, geese, and swans stream through by the thousands, I am thunderstruck. The remarkable physiology that allows our avifauna to find their way through storm and unimaginable distances to their destinations defies logic. Fraught with peril, it is the most dangerous part of their existence since leaving the nest.

Wild About Utah: the wonders of bird migration

This summer, while running on the river trail, I saw an otter. A real life river otter. It leapt out of the water and darted into a pocket between rocks on the bank, with a trout in its mouth! It was one of those moments where I was confronted with something that was, in my mind, so wildly outside the realm of possibility that it took me a minute to figure out what the blurred brown weasel-shaped thing even was.

Wild About Utah: river otters

There is a story I like of an old Zen master who one day was asked to speak wisdom to his acolytes as they were sitting outside. He obliged. He rose and walked to the front of the students. He waited a moment to think carefully about his words, opened his mouth, and then just as he was about to speak, a bird in a nearby tree sang its beautiful warbling song. The master did not interrupt but instead simply listened and waited until the song finished, and the bird had flown away. When it had, he finally spoke: “The sermon has been delivered,” he acknowledged, and took his seat once more.

Wild About Utah: sermons of birds

The following is an unedited transcript. At 11:00 last Friday, I was standing alone outside a 120 ft pigeon loft in Fielding, Utah, scanning the sky for incoming birds. A few minutes later, the loft owner, Derek Alder, pulled into the driveway. "I passed them in Malad," he said, hopping out of his truck. “They should be here in about 10 minutes." Earlier that morning, Derek had driven 250 pigeons to Spencer, Idaho, 180 miles away. He had released them at 8 a.m. and had barely beaten them home.

Wild About Utah: Homing Pigeons

I first met the Great Salt Lake in 1964 with two CMU college buddies on our way to Los Angeles. We heard you could float in its magical waters. Sure enough it worked and we bobbed in its gentle waves, oblivious to the many other virtues of this extraordinary water body.

Wild About Utah: The Great Salt Lake's Importance For Birds

Doubt is a tricky thing. It’s neither good nor bad, it is simply the axis upon which the scales of hope and fear balance. It is the prerequisite of faith, belief, disbelief, and nihilism, all equal paths of equal circumstance. It is the fork in the road which Berra told us to take all the same.

Wild About Utah: In Equal Measure To Our Fears

The following is an un-edited transcipt. Children’s author George Selden described the impact of a cricket’s chirping in the bustle of a subway station in his book “The Cricket in Times Square” like this: “Like ripples around a stone dropped into still water, the circles of silence spread out. …Eyes that looked worried grew soft and peaceful; tongues left off chattering; and ears full of the city’s rustling were rested by the cricket’s melody.” Combine this musical talent with Jiminy Cricket’s gentle reminder to always listen to my conscience, and it is no wonder that I would drift to sleep on summer evenings enamored with cricket songs. How, I thought, could such a beautifully-sounding insect be the villain in Utah’s legend we know as the Miracle of the Gulls, memorialized in Minerva Teichert paintings and Temple Square monuments?

Wild About Utah: Mormon Crickets

The following is an unedited transcript. Primates of the northlands. I consider tree squirrels to be on par with many primates for intelligence and agility. Those who have bird feeders may agree with me as they vainly attempt to thwart squirrel’s from invading their feeders. We have red squirrels visiting our bird feeder regularly. I’ve outsmarted them for the moment, but they continue to work on the problem I’ve presented them and feel a failure coming my way! I’ve watched red squirrels manipulate fir cones with their front paws with amazing dexterity. Like myself eating a cob of corn, it spun the cone rapidly while shredding the cone scales to access the seed. Their tiny toes grip the cone identically to my fingers gripping the cob of corn. I’m amazed how they can unerringly navigate their way from tree to tree through our forest. There are many examples of squirrel intelligence witnessed by animal behaviorists. Arboreal squirrels often build dreys that look like bird nests. Dreys

Wild About Utah: Intelligent Squirrels

Wild About Utah is a weekly nature series produced by Utah Public Radio in cooperation with Stokes Nature Center, Bridgerland Audubon Society, Quinney College of Natural Resources, Cache Valley Wildlife Association, Utah State University and Utah Master Naturalist Program - USU Extension. More about Wild About Utah can be found here . Utah is a state endowed with many natural wonders from red rock formations to salt flats. And from desert wetlands to columns of mountains forming the basin and range region. When we look closer, nature is everywhere including just outside our door.

Since 1956, the Bridgerland Audubon Society has been documenting about one hundred bird species braving our northern Utah winters, but there’s an equally wonderful array of birds that spend their summers in Cache Valley.

Wild About Utah: Bird-Friendly Coffee Conserves Habitat

Probably yesterday by the time you hear this, I will have proposed to my now fiance. I wanted to do it earlier, but life held me off from doing it in Utah. Utah wouldn’t let me say what Poland, her home country, was there for. The land needed to be a part of the process.

Wild About Utah: Take The Plunge

The minute I heard there was a well-stocked community fishing pond just five miles down the road from where I live, I dusted off my old fishing pole, slipped out of the house, and threw my line into the Wellsville Reservoir. I had the place to myself. There was snow on the ground but the water wasn't frozen. Within the first hour, I felt the tug on the line and reeled in a 12-inch trout. I was hooked! I returned just about every evening to catch my limit of 2. I called all my friends who liked to eat fish and started to consider adding fresh fish delivery to my resume.

Wild About Utah: Restocking Alpine Lakes

Holy smokes! Once again, our summer has become a smoke-filled world we’re warned against breathing. I often wonder how our feathered friends are weathering the pall.

Wild About Utah: Birds And Fires

Utah’s state bird is is commemorated as the seagull, more accurately the the California Gull. Known in Utah for having saved the pioneers from the Mormon cricket invasion of 1848 and subsequent years, gulls hold a hallowed place in local history.

A Moment to Think About Our State Bird

All year I wait for the summer evenings. All year I long for the oddity of ‘warm and dark,’ of trilling owls flickering from treetop to treetop, and for the scent of hot baked earth cooling as on a sill. Summer evenings evoke in me joy in being out of doors, living within the intact Eden which lies just below our own preconceptions and deepening my appetite for life. Summer evenings, those dark arid cradles of Utah’s providence, have other benefits, too.

Wild About Utah: At Home In The Dark

Many years have passed and yet I still have vivid memories of the skylark- a joyous bird of the English countryside whose aerial song lifts one’s spirit to mingle with this buoyant beauty. Thankfully, we have our own version of the skylark whose name reflects its unforgettable song.

Wild About Utah: The Bobolink

My father’s first caterpillar encounter has always been a bedtime favorite. The story goes that a plump fuzzy one was crawling on his picnic blanket one afternoon. I would imagine him watching its five pairs of prolegs innocently undulating along. Then, Dad ate it, hairy bristles and all.

Wild About Utah: Malacomosa Dance

Just imagine waking from a very long sleep into a bright May morning in Cache Valley. This is the story of Luci, a western firefly, told charmingly by Melissa Marsted and illustrated by Liesl Cannon in their new children’s book, The Mystery of Luci’s Missing Lantern.

Wild About Utah: Nibley Firefly Park

The serenades around where I live begin early. Today it was during the full moon at 3 a.m., in a break from the blessed rain. The chorus is mostly of robins, but one voice sticks out as new; a call I do not know; a love letter to the curiosity of who could make such a call. I have hope that I’ll be able to find who sings like a Geddy Lee who has found Xanadu. It isn’t the first mystery bird I’ve encountered though. I do remember my first, how can one not, that first call which bamboozled and hypnotized me years ago, both awakening and soothing that inside of me which makes me human. I used to live in a small cabin in the middle of Alaska, and during the eternal summers I’d hear this bird’s haunting call lull me to sleep. It was a Weddell seal of the woods. A UAP that sang. At first, I didn’t want to know who it was filling the woods with quicksilver honeydew, drop by drop. I somehow felt that the magic would be lost, that by knowing the source I would ruin the spring. But then one day,

Wild About Utah: Full Moon Serenade 

Bad advice

These short nuggets of info are always interesting and I like learning about Utah.  Thanks for all the research you do to make it accurate!

Short nuggets

Wild About Utah

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