Norm and other interested parties, Here is a link to a quick trip I made around the area looking for open water this afternoon. I have mapped all of the locations I passed and their amount of open water.
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=204169457769602036467.00049a27835929ccae800&ll=40.146339,-105.175896&spn=0.138041,0.308647&t=h&z=12 OR tinyurl version: http://tinyurl.com/5s8sjbt The blue mark is the original sighting. The red warning signs are either completely frozen lakes or lakes that had nothing on them despite tiny amounts of open water (click for more details). The purple marker is a location I found that had 40% frozen / 60% open water that may have contained the Tufted Duck, but I just didn't have the time to wait for the duck in question to raise its head from a sleeping position. There were many geese, Ring-necked Ducks, Mallards, Gadwall, and Redheads on this tiny little private pond. The viewing is bad to terrible from the road, and parking or viewing from the road is even worse. If you want to see my point, take a look at street view in google maps and you will barely even see there is a pond there and the shoulder is lacking at best. If someone would be willing to contact the land owner for more information, that would be a huge boon as this may be a great place for this bird and for birders if permission is granted. If others would like to collaborate on this map adding ice conditions on each lake in their area let me know, I can add your google account email address and you can add info as found. Good luck! Bryan Guarente Instructional Designer The COMET Program University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Boulder, CO -- 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.
