Today was the day for my annual Indian Peaks winter count near Ward along the Peak-to-Peak Highway in Boulder County. Seven of us gathered and split into two teams to cover the area. Gary Matthews led one group on a hike down the Switzerland Trail and along Lefthand Creek while I toured along some of the roads and up to the Brainard Lake gate with the other group. To tell the truth, we all spent a lot of time and found the most birds in Ward itself, especially at the feeders by the house next to the community center as you drive out of town on Utica St. Highlights here were double digits of Pine Grosbeaks, about 6 Evening Grosbeaks and some Clark's Nutcrackers. By 11 we felt we had done our duty to Ward, and headed on Allenspark for lunch and more birds.
In Allenspark the feeders at the Fawn Brook Inn were active with mainly Pine Siskin and Steller's Jays. Tiring of that, we decided to head up to Estes Park to investigate a report of a Pine Warbler at a private residence. Here we finally hit gold, well bright yellow actually with the warbler coming a couple of times into some real old-fashioned suet. That psyched us up to return to the Fawn Brook where the siskin flock had about doubled-but had been joined by a handful of Brown-capped and Grey-crowned Rosy Finches. As we watched, the wintering Band-tailed Pigeon put in a fly by appearance and we called it a day. Bill Kaempfer Boulder --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cobirds?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
