"When you get up there, it's like an overdone Christmas tree," Baxter says while gliding through cloudy green water. "Birds are everywhere."

And he delivers. "There" is a barren, rocky island just off Antelope Island. Yet the appropriately named Egg Island teems with the life, and some death, of hundreds of nesting birds.

The guide - giving a tour to seven people on Sunday as part of the 10th Great Salt Lake Bird Festival - points out the black feathers of double-crested cormorants, the spindly stature and S-shaped necks of the great blue herons, and the hard-to-spy sanderlings, which blend in with the tan-colored rock and aren't there to nest but while migrating. No need to indicate the California gulls, whose cries drown out the other birds.

But ever the teacher, Baxter notes these gulls are not the same as the ones that litter parking lots, and he shows a dead male gull near the shore. Cause of death: worked too hard finding a mate.

This is Baxter's fifth year as owner of Great Salt Lake Adventures and you can understand why he started the business, which offers kayak tours and rentals. The North Ogden resident, who began kayaking about 35 years ago when he was 11 or 12, says he "ignored" the Great Salt Lake as a place to paddle until he realized he could kayak here in the winter, when everything else is frozen. He would eventually know the lake well enough to navigate it in winter's fog, and learn that the bay of coyotes meant he was near the rock outcrop called Lady Finger.

"It's just the solitude really," Baxter says, explaining the lake's allure. Besides his tour group, there is no one nearby Sunday. Two sailboats are off in the distance. The cry of birds fill the air but grow faint as the group moves away from Egg Island. A pair of eared grebes swim in the water but duck under as the kayaks approach. Not even the dreaded brine fly poses a problem.

Except that those flies are part of the reason Baxter is closing his business as soon as the festival ends today. By keeping the lake's water level low, the drought has meant more sunlight penetrates the lake bottom, Baxter explains, providing more habitat for the fly to hatch. They get so thick in July and August that paddling customers disappear. For the rest of the season, Baxter is lucky to get six customers a week, when he needs 30 to make a profit.

Sunday's group was appreciative. Most were on a family outing, indulging the birder of the group, Marsha Swartzfager. The West Pointe resident brought her husband, Pat; mother, Charlotte McKenzie; and sisters Cathleen McKenzie and Diana Merriman. Not that they minded. It was a good excuse to get out of the city and out of doing yardwork.

Merriman called the trip "awesome" but acknowledges she isn't a convert, yet. "I'll never get into it as much as she does," gesturing to her older sister, who has a copy of The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America in her car.

Aside from pointing out birds, Baxter, president of the Wasatch Audubon Society, offers mini biology and geology lessons on the way to and from Egg Island, which is about 6 miles from Antelope Island State Park Marina.

The birds choose Egg Island not for its food - there is none for the herons or cormorants - but because it offers protection from such predators as coyotes and "Boy Scouts," Baxter says with a laugh. The adult birds fly to nearby marshes for food. The ones in the middle and top of the rookery picked the best spots, with the late-comers left to the more precarious shore.

Baxter advises the group to stay several feet from the edges, so as not to disturb the nesting. While the birds aren't endangered, "It's their territory, not ours," he says. Some are brooding. A heron chases a gull. The cormorants flock together, though one is found alone in the water, perhaps to get away from the noise, Baxter says. He urges paddlers to get closer to spy its emerald-colored eyes and orange beak. None of the species were new to Swartzfager, who started birding more than 20 years ago as a college student in Logan. She enjoys the hobby because all it takes is a pair of binoculars. "I love wildlife. Birds are easy to see. They're interesting. I like to get away from crowds."

When the tour is over and the group is back on land, Baxter shows the lake still has a power over him, even after countless explorations. "That island is just a little bit magical," he says, and then starts to spray off the kayaks to prepare for his company's last tour.

hmay@sltrib.com

Last day to celebrate bird festival

The Great Salt Lake Bird Festival ends today, with opportunities to spot birds in Cache Valley, Springville, the Oquirrh Mountains, along the Jordan River Parkway and in Kaysville. It ends with a dutch-oven dinner at the Farmington Bay Learning Center at 6 p.m. or a 1-mile evening walk at the Nature Conservancy's Shorelands Preserve starting at 6 p.m. For more information, call 801-451-3286 or go to www.greatsaltlakebirdfest.com.