Greetings, Today I played hooky from work and made a quick trip north to Ft. Collins and Windsor.
I arrived at Grandview Cemetery at about 9:45. The south side was hopping with Black-capped Chickadees and Pine Siskins. Had a singing Brown Creeper. At about 10:00, I heard cones being dropped to the ground under a conifer on the north side of section 8. Both the male and female White-winged Crossbills were busy plucking/dropping cones again. They were quite visible working the top of this tree for about 15 minutes and then they abruptly disappeared into the center area of a neighboring tree - I didn't see or hear them again. Next, I stopped by Windsor and found the Red-shouldered Hawk from the Kodak Watchable Wildlife area on the south side of the river. The hawk made the search easy by vocalizing loudly. He was moving about quite a bit and when I left, he was on the north side of the river near the Poudre River Trail. Finally, taking advantage of the nice day, I stopped by 88th and the Platte River in Adams County. The lake south of 88th between the Platte and Dahlia hosted one male Barrow's Goldeneye. The West Gravel Lake hosted the tailless male Long-tailed Duck amongst the army of pintail. Good birding, Kathy Mihm Dunning Denver
