The Goddard spent a few weeks in far eastern Idaho – about 30 miles from the Wyoming border – during the waning days of summer 2023. Ririe Reservoir, built in 1970 by the U.S. Army’s Corps of Engineers (CoE), impounds Willow Creek as it flows toward its entry into the Snake River near Idaho Falls. The reservoir has a surface area of 6.1 square kilometers (1,500 acres), about the size of Colorado’s Chatfield Reservoir at normal pool.
We camped at Ririe Reservoir long enough to see some of the cottonwood leaves change to their autumnal colors. This pavement is what I came to call “Raptor Road” because of the frequent sightings of hawks and falcons atop the utility poles (there were, unfortunately, no raptors atop the poles when I took this photo on the morning of September 8). That’s a potato field on the horizon.
Juniper Campground serves the reservoir, and, as is usually the case with CoE-built facilities, it’s outstanding. We spent most of our time at the reservoir camped in a site that had a great view of the reservoir through the Goddard’s back and side windows. We were there for Labor Day weekend and, although the Saturday and Sunday of the weekend proved to be pretty chilly and wet, we think the families who filled up the campground still had a great time.
The campground’s stands of native juniper trees, along with planted aspen, cottonwood, and chokecherries, support an outstanding wildlife habitat. The shrubs and trees provide food and shelter for birds, squirrels, and rabbits. I managed to take a few (hundred) photos of birds in the weeks that we were at Ririe Reservoir, and a lot of the pictures featured birds of prey perched atop utility poles (thus the title of this posting).
I was really happy to get some photos of this American kestrel (Falco sparverius) – it’s a species I’ve been wanting to photograph for many years. Their plumage, especially on their heads, is just so pretty. Kestrels are the smallest raptor in North America, weighing only about 5.5 ounces and measuring up to a foot in length, with a two-foot wingspan. Size- and weight-wise, they’re roughly the size of an American robin although their wingspan is much longer. They are found all over the United States, Canada, and Mexico, as well as much of South America. Like other raptors, they can see in ultraviolet light – which allows them to see a urine trail from a rodent. Kestrels also eat a lot of airborne insects, and will commonly patrol a well-lit football or baseball field in search of bugs attracted by the lights. They are fierce little birds, to be sure, but because of their size they’re also prey for other, larger raptors. We saw plenty of these magnificent red-tailed hawks (Buteo jamaicensis), both on power line poles and in the air, which makes a lot of sense because they are the most common hawk in North America. They’re found all over the United States and most of Canada. Red-tailed hawks grow to a length of 22 inches, with a weight of about 3 pounds and a wingspan measuring more than 4 feet. They have a very distinctive call, so commanding that Hollywood productions use the call whenever any bird of prey, whether it’s a bald eagle or an actual red-tailed hawk, is shown on screen (soundfile below). Red-tailed hawks are remarkably long-lived: one banded individual lived for at least 30 years in the wild.
WARNING! The next photo shows a bird eating a fish; if you get squicked out by the sight of mildly bloody things, you may want to consider scrolling past the picture with some haste.
I saw this osprey (Pandion haliaetus) atop a power pole with its sushi breakfast mid-morning while I was driving to the town of Ririe on some errand that I’m sure was important. I was happy I’d thought to bring along my digital camera, because although we’d seen plenty of these birds during our stay I hadn’t gotten a picture. Ospreys weight about three pounds, with an impressive wingspan of 5 1/2 feet. Ririe Reservoir contains rainbow and cutthroat trout, kokanee salmon, smallmouth bass, and yellow perch. It’s difficult to tell what this unfortunate fellow was.
Ospreys are supremely adapted to support their diet of 99% fish (I don’t know what the 1% is; maybe like all of us, they break down about once a year and get a Big Mac): uniquely among raptors, two of their rear toes are reversible to allow them to carry fish with two toes in front and two toes in back. Their feet also have barbed lobes to aid in the grasping of fish, and they fly with their catch facing head-on to decrease wind resistance. Over the course of several studies, researchers found that ospreys are successful in catching a fish about 25% of the time. They are found all over the world, with the exception of Antarctica. Osprey were seriously endangered until DDT was banned, and their numbers have since strongly rebounded. These birds typically have a lifespan of about 20 years.
Of course, there were birds perched on things other than power poles at Ririe Reservoir (and apologies for anyone expecting more utility pole content; the title of this posting is probably misleading). Here’s a chipping sparrow (Spizella passerina) enjoying a quiet morning while perched on a cottonwood limb. The easiest way to tell a chipping sparrow apart from the other several billion brown-and-white sparrow species is the presence of a dark horizontal line through their eye. Male chipping sparrows have a handsome ruddy-brown cap atop their heads. This species is found throughout the United States, although they’re found in the center of the country only during their migration.This pretty bird sitting atop a juniper tree is a female American goldfinch (Spinus tristis). In the waning days of summer, the plumage of these birds is starting to molt into its winter colors. Goldfinches are unusual among most birds in that they molt twice each year: once in late winter and again in late summer.When birdwatching, I usually have my eyes trained at the tops of trees. Nancy spotted these male American goldfinches from a window in the Goddard, and I stuck my camera out the front door and snapped a couple of photos. We’d just had a brief rainshower in the campground, and these guys were looking for seeds on the ground. Goldfinches are purely vegetarian birds; they eat predominantly grass and flower seeds, and insects only inadvertently. There’s a species of bird called the brown-headed cowbird that lays its eggs in other species’ nests and lets the new parents raise their young (and the cowbird hatchings often crowd or starve out the real hatchlings because cowbirds are much bigger). In the case of goldfinches, cowbird hatchlings usually die a few days after hatching because they can’t survive on the all-seed diet that the goldfinch parents bring to the nest. Note that, like the female goldfinch above, these two fellows also appear to be in the process of molting for the winter.More birds on the ground: while on a morning walk with Gunther down Raptor Road, I saw this mourning dove (Zenaida macroura) on the roadside and bundled up against the chill of the early day. I feared it was sick or injured, but it flew off shortly after I took this picture. You may have heard a whistling sound when a dove flies off; that’s not coming from their beak, but from the beating of their wings. Doves spend a lot of time on the ground gathering seeds, and can eat 20 percent of the body weight (the birds can weigh up to 6 ounces) in seeds every day. This is the most frequently hunted gamebird in North America, but the current population is estimated to number 3.5 million birds (more than one mourning dove for every person in the country). I really like the pale blue ring around mourning doves’ eyes.Mourning dove, elevated (and a shout-out to all the barbed-wire aficionados).Lots o’ ladies in this particular blog posting. This is a female Brewer’s blackbird (Euphagus cyanocephalus) hunting for breakfast in the grass near a campsite. These birds (the males are definitely black, with a startlingly bright yellow eye) are fairly sociable and help reduce insect populations near human habitations. Blackbirds also eat a lot of seeds. They can gather in flocks numbering up to 100; we didn’t see any gatherings that big, but we did see lots of these birds.
We also saw black-billed magpies and an eastern kingbird during our time at Ririe Reservoir. The new species that we saw at the reservoir brought our total species count for the year, through early September, to 87 – the number with which we ended the calendar year 2022. We also saw a lot of utility poles, but I haven’t been keeping track of those. Will we reach 100 species of birds seen in 2023, with more than 3 months left to go? No one can say. However, we’ll be spending quite a few weeks in parts of the country in which we haven’t yet stayed, so it’s very possible.
I should probably include a picture of Ririe Reservoir in this posting, so here’s one with a friendly dog (it’s Gunther, on one of his security patrols around Juniper Campground; everything checked out on this walk). We’ve stayed at more than 60 public and private campgrounds in the nearly two years since we began full-time RVing, and Ririe Reservoir’s Juniper Campground is definitely in our top 5 favorites. Between the opportunities for wildlife watching, enjoying the quiet environment (the dark skies at night allowed for some incredible stargazing), and easy access to a number of attractions in the area, this campground really impressed us.Alright, one more utility pole photo, at sunset, with a center-pivot irrigation system on a potato field, some beautiful Idaho mountains, and an osprey.
Tales of The Goddard 
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