COBirders, Brad Steger and I headed down to southeast Colorado to do a little birding and follow-up on some of Duane Nelsons recently reported birds. REDDISH EGRET was our target bird along with a few other things that we wanted to look for. Our first stop was at the Ft Lyon marshes, where we were looking for LEAST BITTERN. We had a Least Bittern fly up out of the marsh and then drop right back in amongst the tall cattails. We then headed over to Green Heron slough near Road JJ and 16. We re-found the BLACK-AND-WHITE WARBLER that Duane had reported from a couple of days before. Next stop was Van's Grove, this place always seems to produce something but today although a little birdy did not produce anything of real note. Now we headed out to the previously described spot on the north side of John Martin Reservoir to look for the Reddish Egret. While looking for the egret a dark juvenile Jaeger came patrolling the area. The bird never took after the nearby sterna terns or any of the gulls. It floated around at the far west end of the reservoir before heading back to the east end where we lost track of the bird. In the meantime, we had no luck finding the Egret. We had called Duane in case he was available and could come out and bird with us. Unfortunately, we were unable to show Duane the Jaeger as it had disappeared. We are not sure if it has left or was just maybe along the shoreline somewhere chasing grasshoppers? We worked almost the entire north side of the reservoir without finding either the Jaeger or the Egret but at one point we had a VIOLET-GREEN SWALLOW, very rare in Bent County. Next we headed to Lake Hasty campground. There were many YELLOW and WILSON'S WARBLERs in the campground The real notable finds here were one female-type BLACKPOLL WARBLER and one TENNESSEE WARBLER. We also had an empidonax flycatcher that piqued our interest but then disappeared. Next we headed to try for the Egret again. This time we were successful! The bird was right out in the open where we had been looking all morning. Not sure where it had been hiding all morning? After enjoying the Egret we had to go back and pick up our vehicle at Hasty. While on the way back we discussed the empidonax flycatcher and agreed that it was a Wester type flycatcher and also thought it was suggestive of Pacific-slope. So when we got back we looked around for the bird with no luck. We decided to play Pacific-slope tape and within less than a minute the bird was right on top of us. We studied the bird and again all agreed that the bird is suggestive of Pacific-slope. We then decided to play Cordilleran Flycatcher which the bird basically seem to have no response to. Then a little later we repeated the process and again it responded to the Pacific-slope. Unfortunately, the bird never made any noise that any of us heard. Of course, this by no means makes the bird a Pacific-Slope Flycatcher. Anyway, certainly an interesting bird. We then headed to to Tempel Grove and it was very slow so we picked up and went to the Locust Grove at NeeNoshe. This turned out to be very productive. There were again a lot of birds, including: GREAT CRESTED FLYCATCHER (at least 2), CASSIN'S VIREO, TOWNSEND'S WARBLER and ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK. There were also a number of shorebirds at NeeNoshe. Next Brad and I continued north and hit the set of trees around the county office in Eads. Right off we found a large flock of warblers and in no time we found three AMERICAN REDSTARTS. There were also about 15-20 Wilson's Warblers and less than 10 Yellow Warblers. We searched the rest of the area and briefly saw another empidonax flycatcher but it disappeared before we could do much with it. All in all, it was a nice day, I believe we ended with ~126 species. Thank you to Duane for finding the Egret and Warbler and keeping track of them. Hopefully the Jaeger will be re-found!
----- Mark Peterson Colorado Springs -- 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.
