My girlfriend Anna and I went on a road trip from Rapid City, SD through eastern Wyoming and then down into Colorado and then through Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and finally back to PA, where we live. We saw 105 species of birds on our trip and 14 species of mammals. I got 9 new species of birds for my life list and Anna got 10. Below is the birds we saw and where we saw them in Wyoming, if you are interested in the other birds we saw and the other locations we went to, visit my blog (<http://alexlamoreaux.blogspot.com/>) I updated nightly with all the new birds we saw that day and interesting photos, just scroll down through each entry, some older ones are on previous "pages" of the blog. We spend quite a bit of time in Colorado. First entering the state on route 287 coming from Laramie, WY. We stopped to drive down Owl Canyon Road, to search for pinyon jays that we were told might be there, but couldnt find any roads leading to the area with Pinyon pines growing, so we gave up that search and continued down 287. However we did find our first northern harrier of the trip on Owl Canyon road. We then took a short drive down 14 through Roosevelt National Forest and round northern shrike thne turned around and went towards For Collins. We stopped at a few large resevoirs there to look for anything interesting. We found herring guls, ring-billed gulls, American coots, northern flicker, and a few common goldeneyes. There was also a juvenile Cooper's hawk at one of the resevoirs. We coundnt find any of the Barrow's goldeneyes or lesser black backed gulls, or thayer's gulls that were found there earlier in the week. We also stopped by the cemetery that was supposed to have red and white-wonged crossbills, unfortunetely for us, the very location within the cemetery that was supposed to have the crossbills was packed full of people for a funeral, and so there were no crossbills around, however I saw on the listserve that earlier that day they were there. That was on the 23rd of November. Our next plan was to drive to Estes Park and spend the night there and then go into RMNP the next morning. On 34 towards Estes Park, we saw our first Steller's jay of the trip. The next morning we went into Rocky Mountain National Park and drove up the roads as far as we could until the road was blocked by a gate. We got out and walked around the area where it was gated off and found mountain chickadee, red crossbills, and Abert's and rock squirrels. There were also a lot of red-breasted nuthatches there. We then went back down to the lower elevations of the park and found two three-toed woodpeckers hammering away in the top of a dead spruce. At the Montane campground area we found a few Clark's nutcrackers, Cassin's finches, pygmy nutchatches, more red crossbills, and mountain and black-capped chickadees. There was also a group of 5 coyotes roaming the area and we got some great pictures of them playing with each other. We then went to the dam along the creek that feeds into Lake Estes back in Estes Park and found an American Dipper. By the end of the day we had added 8 new birds for the trip and 6 of them were lifers for me, 7 for Anna. At this point we were at 64 bird species for the trip and 13 mammal species. We then drove to the Fawnbrook Inn in Allenspark to look for the Rosy-finches the inn is famous for, but there were none there and the man that was there (I am assuming the owner) was not very inviting and seemed annoyed by us stopping there, so we left. Later that day we drove to Denver. The next morning we went to Rocky Mountain Arsenal NWR (Commerce City) and took the guided tour of the refuge. Here we added northern shoveler, green-winged teal, snow goose (all alone in a flock of Canada geese on a small pond), and blue jay to our trip list. There was also two Ferruginous hawks on the refuge, one sitting alone on a telephone pole and another soaring above a prairie dog colony with a prairie falcon.We saw a total of 27 bird species in R.M. Arsenal NWR. We then drove over to Two Ponds NWR in Arvada. Here we found white-crowned sparrow, American kestrel, and a muskrat. But the highlight of this refuge was the partial albino red-tailed hawk we spotted, which looked normal on it's underside, but almost all the upperwing coverts were pure white. The hawk flew around a little and then disappeared. Later a typical red-tailed hawk was soaring around. We had a total of only 14 bird species at this NWR. Later that day we started to drive towards Kansas on 70, along the highway we had our first western meadowlark of the trip. Right as it was getting dark we spotted a great-horned owl sitting on a telephone pole along the highway. >From the very beginning of the trip, I counted each and every raptor we saw every day. And wrote down as detailed information about it as I could. Below is the data I collected for the Colorado portion of our trip: Red-tailed Hawks Light (typical) morph – 32 Dark morph - 1 Partial Albino - 1 Ferruginous Hawks Light morph - 2 Golden Eagles Adult/Sub-adult - 5 Bald Eagles Juvenile - 2 Prairie Falcons 1 American Kestrels Male - 11 Female - 8 Northern Harriers Male - 2 Female/Juvenile - 1 Cooper’s Hawks Juvenile - 1 Total Number of Raptors Observed In CO: 86 Thanks to everyone that replied to my post a few weeks ago on the listserve about places to bird in CO. We had a great trip and cant wait to get back to CO. Alex Lamoreaux Hershey, PA -- 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
