Dragging Our Whole Family Birding... Again

This is from an adventure we had back in April but I'm posting about it now.

 

We didn't make it to the Greater Sage Grouse lek this year because of weather (check out our adventure on my April 9 blog post) but Nichole took a break in the middle of finals to get up really early in the morning (like 2 or 3am) with the rest of us to go an undisclosed location (can't tell you where it is) to a Sharp-tailed Grouse lek. So cool. Jeremy and Nichole had been there before but the rest of us hadn't. These grouse are smaller than the sage grouse but they were big enough to get a good look at them (when it got lighter). Like with the sage grouse, we heard them before we saw them. Then when we saw them it was neat to see the similarities and the differences in their displays.

They make such cools sounds, different from the sage grouse. Some similarities in sound but mostly different.

After the lek, we went to another spot but didn't find our target bird in that area. Oh well. We did see plenty of other birds. We can't complain because we did see the Sharp-tailed Grouse earlier. We also saw a skunk while we were driving around.

We headed to the Golden Spike National Historic Site where we got to see where trains from the East and the West met to finish laying down tracks from both directions. We visited way back when Jr. was in 4th grade and had his 4th grade National Parks Pass. This time, Lucky was able to get his parks pass there and did the Junior Ranger program there to get another badge. Fun. Jet was cute and wanted to be like his brother so the ranger gave him a badge, too. Awww. Isn't Jr. the greatest? (I did not write that last sentence but when I looked at my blog I didn't realize that. I was trying to figure out what Jr. had to do with Lucky and Jet getting badges. Ha Ha Ha. This is what happens when I step away from the computer while I'm in the middle of writing a blog post. Ha Ha Ha. I love my family).

We got to go see the trains they keep there and learned a lot. Jr. Jr. asked a lot of questions which I thought was awesome.

We had a good adventure that day.