St. George Bird Fest 2025 - Day 3 - Van Strohm Photography

Introduction

This post is the third and last in a series of three posts about the Red Cliffs Bird Fest 2025 that was held at the end of April in St. George, Utah. The first two posts can be viewed here:

Bird Fests are wonderful experiences if you are into birds. While I attended the one in St. George, UT, there are actually quite a few all over the country. I would highly recommend attending one.

Zion Mid-High Elevation Birding

The third day of the bird fest was by far the best! We covered many spots in and around Zion National Park, from a ghost town at 3,700 feet elevation by the Virgin River, all the way to over 8,000 feet on the west side of Zion. There were so many interesting and exciting birds to see which we could get close enough to get really nice photos of.

In fact, there were so many photos from this day, that I am changing the format of this post compared to the previous days. Otherwise, the post will grow way too long. I will cover the two main parts of the tour, Grafton and West Zion in separate sections below, each section providing the highlights of each, then a gallery of photos of other birds. As before, the name of the bird in bold is a hyperlink you can click through to learn more about them.

The weather was nice though a bit windy, but we could mostly stay out of the wind because of the tall trees all around. It’s always such a treat to visit Zion anyway because it is so pretty. It was a full day of birding, so it kept us quite busy and definitely was not for the faint of heart. At the end of the day, we were all pretty exhausted, but it was worth it.

Grafton

The first stop on this day was the ghost town of Grafton, on the other side of the Virgin River from the town of Rockville. If you are heading towards Zion from Hurricane, you pass right through Rockville. Grafton was first settled in 1859. There are several restored and maintained historical buildings plus a graveyard a little way out. But of course, we were there for the birding, so here we go.

Common Black Hawk

The highlight, by far, at Grafton was sighting a Common Black Hawk. While common in Central America and parts of South America and even southeast Arizona, it is pretty rare to see the Common Black Hawk in southwest Utah. But their range does cover just the southwest tip of Utah.

Last year, I did see a Black Hawk nest with at least one chick and was able to photograph it from a distance. But I left it alone and did not return for follow up photos because they are known to be quite skittish and to abandon nests if disturbed too much. Even just being there with my camera out attracted too many curious people stopping to see what I was photographing.

When I first photographed this bird in Grafton, I noticed it seemed to have mustard on its beak.

But zooming in on my viewfinder, I realized it was not mustard, but a Yellow Warbler it had caught. They must be quite good hunters to catch Yellow Warblers. How exciting to see! Sorry, I know some readers might be grossed out. But it is the way of nature. But because of that I won’t include the pictures of it eating the warbler.

More Birds at Grafton

Beyond the Black Hawk, there were quite a few other birds to see here as well. The birds I got good photos of are listed below, along with a slider to scroll through to see each photo.

Because of the Black Hawk sighting, we spent more time than we intended to here, so it was past time to move on.

West Zion

From Grafton, we went back to the town of Virgin then turned north, heading up Kolob Terrace Road towards Kolob Reservoir. The road is also called N Terrace Road and travels through a mix of private, public, and national park land. Though we wouldn’t get all the way to the reservoir because we ran out of time, we covered a wide range of elevation from 3,700 feet to over 8,000 feet and saw many wonderful birds.

Black-throated Gray Warbler

The first time I spotted a Black-throated Gray Warbler was a few years back in the main section of Zion National Park. At the time, I was mesmerized by the bold pattern of black and white stripes covering the bird with two small yellow dots over the eyes. So, I was quite excited to see this striking bird again.

Grace's Warbler

A little further up, we stopped at a spot with a Grace’s Warbler. He was a little shy at first, but then we played a Grace’s Warbler song on our phone to see if we could get him to come out. Wow, that did it! From that point on, he was convinced there was another male mixed in with us and he would chase us off. Of course, we were thrilled to get such great shots. (Click the arrows to see all three shots.)

Osprey

Further up the road, we turned off to go out to Lava Point Campground and Overlook. At the turnoff is a reservoir and far in the distance on the other side of the reservoir is an Osprey nest. When I trained my camera on the nest, I could just make out that there was a chick in the nest. Trust me, the little white thing sticking up from the nest is the chick’s head.

Then, as we were checking out the nest, one of the parents came flying near us, hovered over the lake for a bit, then suddenly dove into the water. Splash! Then it came up and took off out of the water. Unfortunately, it didn’t catch what it was after. Thick chick will have to wait a little longer for its next meal. (Scroll through the images below to see three views of the parent diving.)

Gray Squirrel

Somehow, there is always some kind of mammal that sneaks its way into my series of posts about the bird fest. This time, as we were approaching Lava Point, there was a Gray Squirrel sitting on a branch posing so cutely. I don’t know exactly what species it was, but I don’t usually see Gray Squirrels, so this was rather exciting to me.

Dusky Grouse

I actually had no idea there were Dusky Grouse around Lava Point Campground area, but as we approached, someone suddenly called out “Grouse!” It was a female who flew up off the ground into a tree when it saw us. It stayed in the tree, blending in pretty well and, secure in the knowledge that we couldn’t see it, stayed there very still.

American Dipper

Finally, it was the end of our expedition and the last bird we would see that day was the American Dipper. This is actually quite a fascinating bird. It is the only songbird that swims. It spends most of its time in rivers, sometimes dipping its head into the water, and other times completely diving into the stream, swimming to catch prey. I have seen them two times before in different streams in Zion National Park and I am always fascinated by them when I do.

More Birds from West Zion

Below is a list of other birds which I got good quality images of on this section of the tour. Please scroll through the photos in the slider below to view all the images.