Early this afternoon (12:58 PM) in mild, sunny weather, I hiked up to Dinosaur Ridge and saw a Greater Roadrunner. This was a great experience and it was especially fun, as it took a little detective work to close it on it. The bird was first seen last August by the sharp-eyed Dino Ridge tour leaders who guide and educate visitors through the exhibits of footprints, fossils, etc of birds' distant ancestors - the dinosaurs. Subsequent to the first sighting, the bird was seen about once a month and photographed well. These Dino Guides posted clear photos of the roadrunner on their Facebook page, where comments about its ID soon appeared. "Is it a roadrunner? Maybe a Scaled Quail?" then a consensus as to the correct ID emerged. The missing link between that Facebook page and the field class fraternity turned out to be Cole Wild. He was somehow scanning Facebook, when he looked at the Face of the roadrunner on a Facebook page and emailed me with the news and an implicit, "Go get it!" My first thought was that this photo was on the Facebook site of a Dino Ridge in Arizona or Texas. Having been born in the middle of the last century, I did not know much about FB, or even who owned that Facebook site, so I sought assistance from ornithology's answer to NextGen, Marcel Such. He helpfully took an interest, took pity and sent me the Dino Ridge phone number. I called there and spoke to Erin and Amber, who were extremely keen and helpful. I sent them a CFO rare bird report form, and they will be relieved to learn that I will now be able to fill it out myself. Sue, the Dino Ridge bus driver, had seen the bird twice on January 5th. I made a couple of futile hikes into the area, then I enlarged the search party by calling a few avid Jeffco listers who both lived nearby and had the time to visit the Ridge repeatedly. Now we had a search party, but when Dick Schottler and Mark Chavez and I hiked up there on Saturday, we struck out again. Ira Sanders was out of town and Cole Wild could not venture down from his boreal residence. I was concerned that if everyone knew about this bird, there was sure to be a message on a secondary site that the bird had been seen the day before.
Finally after a long search yesterday and again today, I saw the bird, right where it has been seen most often by the Dino guides, and also by a frequent hiker I ran into today. He has seen it three times since October and did not realize that it was rare here. The route to the site is to go to roughly a mile south on Morrison Road from I-70, and park in one of the few spots where Alameda Avenue slices off to the southeast. (This happens to be just opposite the northern entrance to Red Rocks Park). Alameda is closed to vehicles between that parking site and Rooney Road on the east side of Dino Ridge, but is open to bikers and hikers. Walk south up Alameda to the where it makes a hairpin turn and dives back down the eastern slope. The best area to wait and wait and look and look and wait is the 50 yard stretch of the rocky slope that lies just before the hairpin turn. It has been seen on the east side, but usually is spotted on the west side of that hairpin, where it often sits and suns. A few minutes after I saw it today, it swiftly darted (cartoon-like) across the road and up the west side of the ridge, south of Alameda. In that area there are far fewer hikers and bikers, but is difficult to see there from the road. Other notes. I quizzed a couple of hikers who walk the ridge trail 4-5 times weekly over the past year, they have never seen it. They know the bird from having lived in Arizona. So I suspect that it is more often on the slopes instead of the ridge itself. I asked Dave Leatherman what this roadrunner might be eating through the dark winter, and he suspected that its diet has switched away from usual herps to small rodents, perhaps the same grasshoppers that support our February returning bluebirds, and even juniper berries and seeds. I wondered whether it might eat dog-food, but housing and pets are scarce in the area. None of the local ranchers had seen it around their outbuildings. There are a few records of Greater Roadrunner north of its usual southeast CO range. For example in 1946, one was spotted in Logan County, another just last summer in Morgan County. There are several reports, mostly far back in time, from the greater Denver metro area and Clear Creek County. There are no valid Jefferson County records, just an unverified report from a non-birder. One of the hikers I met today had seen one south of Boulder a couple of summers ago, but could not recall many details. I will be going back tomorrow, Tuesday, if anyone wants to join me. Please send me a personal email at jroll...@gmail.com, so I will know the size of the group. I can then decide whether we are a small enough party to park where I described above, or whether we might park at one of the park-and-rides at the junction of I-70 and Morrison Road (eg, the spot where we park to go up to the Hawkwatch site) and carpool to Alameda. I hope to search again on Saturday with those who work weekdays. Joe Roller, Denver -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To post to this group, send email to cobirds@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to cobirds+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cobirds?hl=en.
