Todd Deininger took the long trip east today to Cheyenne and Kit Carson Counties to see what might be up with spring migration in the far east. Well, not much is the answer. In spite of it being the end of the first week of March, and in spite of most water being ice free that far east (where there was water) we saw virtually no water birds what so ever. In Cheyenne County the sum total of water related birds was hearing one Killdeer in Kit Carson. Meanwhile one county to the north in Kit Carson County (confused yet?) in spite of lots of open water there were almost no water fowl. Neither the golf course pond in Flagler nor the water treatment ponds in Burlington had any birds by they at all, although they were both totally ice free. The good news is that Flagler Reservoir has more water in it than I have seen for more that 10 years, but it only had five Gadwall enjoying the ample aqua. The nearby Crystal Spring Ranch pond had one American Wigeon with about a dozen Mallards while still being about 75% frozen. On the plus side were raptors, thrushes, waxwings and shrikes. The raptor show out east continues to be very strong with lots of Rough-legged Hawks, Northern Harriers and Ferruginous Hawks around (but only one Prairie of all the falcons for the day). We had four different Bald Eagles in Cheyenne County--a count that is almost surely to be a county-day record when we check it out later on e-birds as well as three or four Golden Eagles. Large Robin and Mountain Bluebird flocks were moving through out east and we had a few Cedar Waxwings in both of the Cheyenne County standard metropolitan statistical areas. As an oddity, it seemed that when we found a Great Horned Owl on nest, there would be a pair of Loggerhead Shrikes nearby giving the owl the dickens. I count that as territorial behavior for double breeding activity. Bill Kaempfer Boulder
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