Greetings All,
Today, Tim Smart and I ventured into snowless NE Colorado (virtually no snow on ground, and certainly none in air :o) looking for Snowy Owls. On this quest, we failed. But the day was splendidly sunny, relatively windless, and by afternoon surprisingly warm. We stopped at a small conifer grove on the west side of Logan Co Rd 27, between roads 26 and 34 (sorry, did not get more specific location) and kicked up 7 COMMON REDPOLLS and a SHORT-EARED OWL. To the north, on CR 27 between roads 38 and 44, we had 300+ LAPLAND LONGSPURS and a CHESTNUT-COLLARED LONGSPUR at a large prairie dog town. N Sterling Res was free of Snowy Owls, but had some open water and scads of geese. We had an estimated 27,500 CACKLING GEESE and 15,000 CANADA GEESE (mostly Lessers). Hiding in these throngs were a handful of G White-fronted Geese, Snow Geese, Ross's Geese, and a HYBRID SNOW (blue morph) x CACKLING GOOSE. In the weedy areas, we pished up 225 AM TREE SPARROWS. In the tiny town of Sedgwick, we found a RED-BELLIED WOODPECKER, perhaps the same bird seen there a month or so ago by Mark Peterson. In the slightly less tiny town of Haxtun, at the town park had 3 BROWN CREEPERS, and amongst a junco flock, a GRAY-HEADED JUNCO At the miniscule town of Paoli, between Haxtun and Holyoke, we had 44 GREAT-TAILED GRACKLES and finally, at Frenchman Creek SWA, we found a FIELD SPARROW (Eastern race?) among 140 or so American Tree Sparrows. Also, for the day, we saw a sweet 5 FERRUGINOUS HAWKS, 4 PRAIRIE FALCONS, and about 6 ROUGH-LEGGED HAWKS. Cheers Steven Mlodinow Longmont 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.
