Today was our last day of field work for breeding season bird surveys (we start our fall migration study at Lucky Peak late next week!) and Heidi & I spent the morning surveying near Ketchum.  On the way back to Boise, we also had to complete some vegetation assessments S of Bellevue but 'on the way', since we hadn't seen Black Rosy-finches on a Feb trip to the area,  we decided to take a short (6-hr ;-) detour heading up the East Fork Rd past Triumph and up Forest Service road 118 to the trailhead to Johnstone Pass (mentioned in the Svingen & Dumroese birding guide to Idaho) in the hopes that we could bump into some Black Rosy-finches.  It was a rough road (the last 4 miles) but the hike was great (relatively gradual climb most of the way and no mosquitoes!!) and we were able to see one male Black Rosy and hear one or 2 others by veering off the trail and following the creek (actually headwaters of the East Fork Big Wood River) up to its source in a cirque-like bowl by a bunch of snowfields.  We also saw/heard 2 American Pipits up there ...

On the way back to Boise (after the final veg assessment), we stopped at Mountain Home Reservoir at around 815pm and were treated to the biggest group of shorebirds yet this fall, including all 4 regular 'peep' species (~120 Western, 4 Least, 3 Semipalmated, and 1 Baird's), both yellowlegs (1 Lesser & 4 Greater) as well as Wilson's Phalaropes, Killdeer, Am Avocets, and BN Stilts.  All of these were around the S and SW end where some mudflats are opening up.

Kind of fun to go from the mountains to the desert in one day!

Cheers,

Jay