Today, Saturday, Ron Bolton and I made our annual pilgrimage to the Pawnee Grasslands and the wetlands of Beebe Draw and Lower Latham. Highlights included 1. the previously reported Dunlin, foraging along the south side of CR46, just south of Lower Latham reservoir, still present at 4:15 2. a Barn Owl that flew through the trees behind the bathroom at Crow Valley campground. 3. a Chestnut-collared Longspur found on the western side of "Murphy's Pasture" on CR 96 just west of the paved road that leads north from the Crow Valley campground (sorry, I forget the road number, but it's obvious). This is the only Chestnut-collared Longspur we've seen since 2003 on this annual trip. It walked slowly along the road immediately in front of us for many minutes, giving us phenomenal views. 4. Many McCown's Longspurs. 5. An American Bittern that flew across the marsh at Lower Latham. We could not locate a Mountain Plover. We looked carefully at CR55/CR120, where they had previously been reported. We also checked Dyer's Farm at 51/114, where we've had success before, but no luck. We also finally felt confident identifying the major sparrowesque species of the grassland roads. This might be obvious to the rest of you, but it felt fairly revolutionary to us. The basic problem in the Grasslands is that nearly all the birds that fly along by your slow-moving car are Horned Larks. But, some of them might be longspurs, so you're tempted to stop for every bird that flies by, which is maddening. The trick is to look only at the tails, not the rest of the bird. Once we learned this, and once we saw in-flight examples, the IDs took less that a second for each bird. The key: 1. If the tail is all black (actually thick black edges, with a dark brown central strip), it's a Horned Lark. 2. If the tail has just thin white edges, it's a Vesper Sparrow. 3. If the tail has a lot of white (thick white edges with a thin black center stripe and terminal band), it's a McCown's Longspur. The white in the tail looks gaudy compared to the other options. 4. If the tail has a less gaudy bit of white - but clearly noticeable and really easy to notice from a distance, also thick white edges but with a thicker black center stripe and terminal band - it's a Chestnut-Collared Longspur. Also, we were able to watch the display flights of the McCown's several times: an upward flight of about 50 feet, followed by a lovely gradual falling downward with sharply raised wings. This is unique among the three species. The Horned Larks did more of a zipping, zig-zagged flight without the Skylarking parachuting. We didn't' see the Chestnut-collared's display, but read that it is more of a flying in a circle. Here's our total day list: Pied-billed Grebe Horned Grebe (1 in full breeding plumage at a small reservoir called Lindee Reservoir, on CR51, a few miles south of HW114, near a complex of fairly recent houses) Western Grebe Clark's Grebe American White Pelican Double-crested Cormorant Great Blue Heron American Bittern White-faced Ibis Canada Goose American Wigeon Gadwall Green-winged Teal Mallard Northern Pintail Blue-winged Teal Cinnamon Teal Northern Shoveler Canvasback Redhead Ring-necked Duck Lesser Scaup Common Goldeneye Bufflehead Ruddy Duck Osprey Northern Harrier Sharp-shinned Hawk Swainson's Hawk Red-tailed Hawk Ferruginous Hawk American Kestrel Ring-necked Pheasant American Coot Black-necked Stilt American Avocet Killdeer Marbled Godwit (2 at Crom Reservoir) Greater Yellowlegs Least Sandpiper Dunlin (Lower Latham, CR 46) Ring-billed Gull Rock Dove Eurasian Collared-Dove Mourning Dove Barn Owl (Crow Valley) Burrowing Owl (CR 49, about 3 miles south of CR 120, near a pasture with a lot of cows near a watering area) Downy Woodpecker Northern Flicker Horned Lark Tree Swallow Northern Rough-winged Swallow Cliff Swallow Barn Swallow Marsh Wren Northern Mockingbird Townsend's Solitaire American Robin Blue-gray Gnatcatcher (scads of them at Crow Valley) Loggerhead Shrike Black-billed Magpie Common Raven European Starling Spotted Towhee Vesper Sparrow White-crowned Sparrow McCown's Longspur Chestnut-collared Longspur Red-winged Blackbird Western Meadowlark Yellow-headed Blackbird Brewer's Blackbird Common Grackle Great-tailed Grackle House Sparrow
Richard Trinkner AP History and Economics Boulder High School 1604 Arapahoe Ave Boulder, CO 80302 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Join us at the 2009 Convention in Alamosa: http://cfo-link.org/convention/index.php 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.as/group/cobirds?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
