A week before the Boulder CBC, I set out today to see what might be around. Early on I had a Merlin picking apart its breakfast atop a utility pole along Colorado Ave. between 28th and 30th. Nearer to the main CU campus I heard a Spotted Towhee.
Then I decided to head to the north to visit Dry Creek Reservoir in southern Larimer County. As I suspected it was ice free (it is full of energized water coming through the mountains as part of the Colorado-Big Thompson water project) but the birds that I found were pretty much what one would suspect to be there in mid-December, American Coots, Ring-necked Ducks, Common Goldeneye, etc. A few Ruddy Ducks were the most unusual species. Further up the road, Carter Lake was also ice free (same reason) but since it was mid-day, there were no rafts of roosting gulls yet to be had. Swinging out to Weld County, the I-25 frontage road bridge over the St. Vrain River has its third shorebird for this December, a Common Snipe, but that was all-no Killdeer, Greater Yellowlegs or Rusty Blackbirds for me there today. Coming back to Boulder CBC territory, I walked the Boulder Creek Trail west from 75th Street, but had none of the goodies reported Friday and Saturday. Cottonwood Marsh at Walden Ponds was frozen, and the pond just to the east would have been if not for two bubblers. However only Ring-necked Ducks were observed. Finally I stopped at the Veterans Park Overlook at Valmont Reservoir at about 3:00 p.m. and was rewarded. First off, there is an ice shelf that has developed in the SE corner of Hillcrest Reservoir-the closest part of the Valmont Complex to the overlook. Since both geese and gulls like to spend at least part of their time standing on the ice rather than in the water the normally difficult observation experience at Valmont was not so bad. Second the hour of my visit was late enough to see large numbers of white-cheeked geese fly in and the gull numbers begin to swell. The gull collection included a handful of Herring Gulls including one first cycle and a third cycle Thayer's Gull along with a couple hundred Ring-billed Gulls. When I first arrived the few hundred geese in the SE corner included one Blue Goose and two Greater White-fronted Geese. The arrival and mixing in of three to four thousand more geese made it tough to keep track of these three, however. 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.
