Todd Deininger and I headed to the NE today for migrants. I was expecting better luck with shorebirds and gull types rather than passerines, but it turned out pretty much the opposite.
Our first stop was Prewitt Reservoir which is still almost totally full and has little or no shorebird habitat. We went to the west inlet canal which offered a lot of chip notes (mostly Yellow-rumped Warblers, I thought) but few good views, so we started heading out. It turned out the best birding was along the strip of willows that are close to the road NW of the parking area for the inlet. I've had good luck in this area before, so I hope I've learned my lesson. In any event the first bird we spotted here was an Eastern Phoebe. Then we added Orange-crowned, Wilson's and a Townsend's Warbler, one Gray Catbird and a Swainson's Thrush. We checked out the surface of the reservoir and a scan of the large Franklin's Gull flock allowed us to pick out a very distinctive Laughing Gull that was between juvenile and first cycle plumage (warm brown tones to head, nape, back and scapulars but with a white face, large drooping black bill and distinctly bigger than the nearby Franklin's but smaller than Ring-billed Gulls in the area). Rather than bird more at Prewitt, we headed off to Haxtun where we had some good Phillips County birds (Say's Phoebe, Brewer's Blackbirds, Orange-crowned Warblers and a slew of Barn Swallows). Perhaps the most interesting thing in Haxtun, though, was the fact that the town was swollen to close to ten times its normal size by some sort of football homecoming/fair/parade/auction type activity. "Downtown" looked like Boulder in the Halloween Mall-Crawl days of yore! >From Haxtun we wound our way north to Red Lion and Jumbo. Although it was perfectly calm and still, I was disappointed at the scarcity of bird activity. After working the area we decided to head on to Ovid for a last stop before returning home-good choice. The south most block of the Lodgepole Creek had a nice mixed warbler flock of Yellow-rumps and Orange-crowneds that was highlighted by a stunning adult male Black-Throated Blue Warbler. Bill Kaempfer Boulder --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Colorado Field Ornithologists: http://www.cfo-link.org/ Colorado County Birding: http://www.coloradocountybirding.com/ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
