Wild About Utah

No, I did not hear the owl call my name—meaning my number is up and death is imminent according to some native tribes. But I do hear them call. The great horned owl is also referred to as the “hoot owl.” There are few owl species that hoot in our area, and those who do so are extremely rare. Great horned owls are great in stature, second only to great grays among northern American owls. Further, they are fierce predators and valiant protectors of their young. Don’t mess with their nest! Due to

THUNK! We have all been startled by the loud thunk of a bird hitting a window. In the United States window collisions kill an estimated 1 billion birds a year with 44% of bird window collisions occurring at homes throughout the year. So, changes made around your home can help maintain our bird populations.

Sometimes I have a hard time coming up with fun or fancy things to say for the radio. It’s just a thing that happens.

‘Remote’ is not a characteristic I would assign to the city center, a major metropolis like where I grew up. But I also remember summers spent high in the crown of our old magnolia tree, where my 8 year old self may have begged to differ. There, I found wildness—forgot about time and place and the civilization that occupied them.

Back in October 2019, the ranger at the Great Salt Lake State Park began to notice a white mound forming on the sand flats behind the visitor center. The white mounds turned out to be hydrated sodium sulfate, known as mirabilite, which was being carried to the surface by the upwelling of a fresh water spring.

If it flies like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, but there’s hundreds in a maelstrom whirlpool whose torrent of wingbeats make your ears mute and skull hum, it must be a Great Salt Lake tornado a la duck.

Oft have we, my friends and I, Left cares of home, and work day woes To find a haven, there cast a fly; And where we’ll camp–God only knows.

It all began so innocently. Let’s bring over a few European starlings to add authenticity for a Shakespearean theatrical. That was 1890. Today, North America has about half of the world population of starlings, approaching a few hundred million.

Before installing our permaculture gardens at Utah State University, Moab, the only birds I observed from my office window were Eurasian Collared Doves and crows.

The fresh morning snow teaches me things I didn’t know, and reminds me of that which I had forgotten after a long year living once more with dark, firm soil.

“Charlie climbed onto the bed and tried to calm the three old people who were still petrified with fear. ‘Please don't be frightened,’ he said. ‘It's quite safe. And we're going to the most wonderful place in the world!’

I first became aware of dark eyed juncos while doing fieldwork for the USFS in Montana. My young children discovered an active nest on the ground near a mountain stream. This was before my birding days. It occurred to me this was a strange place for a small, sparrow sized bird to build a nest, giving predators the advantage. Yet they flourish, and are among the most common and prolific songbirds in North America.

I have always been fascinated by insects, and even as a young child I felt a deep sympathy for these misunderstood creatures. Before I had vocabulary to describe the revolving diversity I witnessed as a kid, I recall a sense of nostalgia for the moths, cicadas, bees, and butterflies who appeared in great numbers and animated various plant types around my city. Their ebbs and flows offered clues and added nuance to the flowers, trees, and a change in the weather. When I was young they seemed like

My boots crunch loudly on the snow and we pause frequently to uncover a bundled-up ear from hats and hoods to listen. We are listening for birds like the high-pitched call of a cedar waxwing, clear trilling song of a ruby-crowned kinglet, or the incessant sounds of the red-breasted nut-hatch.

Rivers run beneath these hills, carving winding caverns through ancient stone, plumbing a subterranean watershed—a second topography, ever changing. What little we’ve seen must lead further in, places mythology might only describe.