I saw an adult female Red-bellied Woodpecker around 1 pm today at the northwest corner of Crow Valley Recreation Area. Here is a link to the photo I took. http://twilberding.zenfolio.com/p1065013871/he8130de#he8130de
The rest of the story: I parked my car at the closed entrance gate and walked in, the whole place to myself. I heard a Downy Woodpecker above the stiff breeze, but didn’t see any birds on the way in. Finally a Blue Jay announced my presence, and what looked to me like a Northern Flicker flew in to inspect me, the intruder. I looked at it and thought, “Hmm, white flicker, no bib. What?” (I am used to hearing a Red-bellied Woodpecker’s “quirrr” sound before seeing one, but this one was silent.) After figuring out what it was I gave credit to the woodpecker for finding me more than I found her. I then followed the fence line to the southwest corner of the park, south of the dry streambed that used to be filled with tumbleweeds, near the “magic juniper.” This was the least windy part of the park and there was a flock of about 20 American Robins and also about 15 Northern Flickers zooming around. I got my photo of the Red-bellied Woodpecker here. So I saw the same bird twice or maybe two of them, can’t tell. On the way out I saw a Dark-eyed Junco white-winged population, a White-crowned Sparrow, and a few Yellow-rumped Warblers. A flock of about 25 beautiful Mountain Bluebirds escorted my car a mile down CR 100 north of Crow Valley, where I stopped on CR 75 at the BYO Playa (Lake Roller) which had a few distant ducks on its 50 acres of water—I didn’t realize it was so huge! Jackson and Union Reservoirs both had an interesting variety of grebes, but nothing rare as far as I could tell. Good birding! Tom Wilberding 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.
