Hello, Birders. Yesterday, Friday, Dec. 30th, Hannah and Andrew and I did some scouting for the upcoming Denver Urban Christmas Bird Count, to be held on New Year's Day. The things we do for Hugh Kingery...
First, we walked the Platte River from I-76 upstream to I-270. The formerly productive east side of that stretch of river is no more, but there are some nice big trucks and some huge mounds of dirt and rock there. Anyhow, the west side of the river was good. We found these birds: * A big flock of warblers, including at least 14 Audubon'ses, 10 Myrtles, 2 apparent intergrades, and 5 indeterminate Yellow-rumps. * Mixed in with the warblers, a surprising Lincoln's Sparrow and a surprised-looking Ruby-crowned Kinglet. * Down on the Platte River sandbars, 3 American Pipits and 4 Killdeer. * Fewer ducks that usual (warm weather to blame, I suspect), but nice diversity, including 1 female Barrow's Goldeneye (south of the I-76 bridge, so well within the count circle), 7 Red-breasted Mergansers, and 4 Hooded Mergansers. Next, we visited the Denver Zoo, where we found: * A fine diversity of waterfowl (21 eBird-compliant taxa) on Duck Pond, including a female Long-tailed Duck. I assume this is the same bird that was found there more than a month ago by Bill Wuerthele. * A lisping, stuttering flock of 20+ Bushtits near the carousel. * 38 Common Grackles in and around the big waterfowl enclosure at the far west end of the zoo. * A Brown Creeper with the cheetahs. * A juvenile Sharp-shinned Hawk above the cheetahs. * Out on Duck Pond, one of the "domestic" Greylag Geese. Note that this "species" has been present in City Park for many years. This particular individual "flew" in--it's all relative--with the Canadas. Wonder if it's a free-flying descendant of one of the original colonists from years ago. Not-so-subliminal message to the Mighty, Mighty Kingery: I continue to believe that these feral birds should "count" for the Denver Urban CBC. * Humboldt Penguins and a Double-wattled Cassowary, but that rigid stickler Kingery probably won't allow those, either... ;) * Finally, a behavioral note. At sundown (yes, I was made to linger and endure the zoo lights), the zoo's many peafowl all started to fly up into the tall cottonwoods to roost. It was a disorganized, zoo-wide mass ascension of sorts--really interesting to behold. I'm with Andrew on this one: The semi-feral peafowl are the most interesting animals in the zoo. Ted Floyd [email protected] Lafayette, Boulder County, Colorado -- 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.
