Todd Deininger and I braved the weather and ventured out for a mid-May trip to Southeast Colorado this weekend. We ended up with 157 trip species, a 122 species day on Saturday and a 120 species day on our return yesterday. Sorry for the late report, but I was off line during the trip and too tired to report last night.
Friday afternoon we headed out from Boulder to Las Animas pushing flock after flock of Lark Buntings out of our way as we proceeded. We ended up swinging east toward Adobe Creek Reservoir where we had a Snowy Plover, and in fact never birded as far west as La Junta the entire trip. On Saturday we started with the bird trail behind Bent's Fort Inn which had at least two Northern Waterthrushes and a singing American Redstart. We continued to Temple Grove where we found two more Waterthurshes, a Black-and-White Warbler and a Broad-winged Hawk. Intermediate stops-i.e., Thurston and Poulsen's were good birdy stops. Lamar CC Woods produced Northern Cardinal, an Ovenbird and another Redstart as well as a soaring Mississippi Kite for us. We continued south to Two Buttes where at the last pond to the east we found a Chestnut-sided Warbler and another Black-and-White as well as an Ash-throated Flycatcher. The remaining water behind the Two Buttes dam had several shorebird species including a pair of Stilt Sandpipers. At that point we decided to shoot between two major storms on the horizon and head toward Kim with an eye on Cottonwood Canyon if we could get around the storm on our left. (It must have been a doozie as I noticed that the next morning the Weather Channel was showing viewer clips from Campo!) Things seemed to be clearing off, so we went ahead and veered south toward Cottonwood where we were rewarded but not without major work. Cottonwood was teeming with expected specialities of the aread after the storm, but most notable was a collection of eleven Mississippi Kites all perched in two or three trees. >From there we crawled (almost literally at less than 10 MPH on the mud slick roads) to Kim where we found the Cassin's Kingbird capital of Colorado-the out-numbered the Western Kingbirds. A sharp Lazuli Bunting provided some color change. Sunday we headed back to Lamar CC in the morning where we added Red-bellied Woodpecker, then back to Temple Grove via Thurston where we had a single Cattle Egret. On Sunday we added Blackpoll Warbler and another American Redstart plus the continued presence of Broad-winged Hawk, At Nee Noshe Reservoir a flock of peeps produced about a dozen White-rumped Sandpipers mixed in with Baird's, Western and Semi-palmated Sandpipers as well as several Snowy Plover and Semi-palmated Plovers. (See also Mark Miller's report as we ran into him while there.) Three more great birds awaited us as we headed home. On a "lark" we stopped at the courthouse in Eads as it looked like the most reasonable place to bird and found a Northern Parula. Just south of Kit Carson in Cheyenne County where the bridge is being replaced on the old highway from the south we had a pair of Bell's Vireos in the transit and finally when a detour off US 285 sent us through Lincoln County we decided to take a look at Kinney Lake and found a nifty Bobolink right as we turned off CR 109 toward the lake. I can't wait until this weekend for the CFO Convention for more good birding company, long days and, oh yes, great birds. Bill Kaempfer Boulder -- 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.com/group/cobirds?hl=en.
