I drove a big loop thru ne Larimer and nw Weld today and birds were pretty
sparse. Highlights included:
Lapland Longspur (group of about 20) on Weld CR45 between CR114 and 122, mostly
feeding on grass seeds at the road edge.
Rough-legged Hawk (dark phase) CR57 s of CR100 (did not see any other
Rough-legs)
Northern Shrike (1a) Norma's Grove area
Prairie Falcon (1) vicinity of CR57 and CR100
Merlin (1f prairie) GR96 w of CR69
Crow Valley Campground (note: closed to vehicles for the winter, walk in is OK):
Lapland Longspur (several flyovers)
Hairy Woodpecker (1 mountain form)
Horned Lark (several flyovers)
Great Horned Owl (1)
House Finch (2)
Brown Creeper (1)
Dark-eyed Junco (few pink-sided)
Northern Flicker (at least 4)
White-breasted Nuthatch (sounded like "interior")
American Goldfinch (at least 30) feeding on sunflowers in dry creekbed n of
the Group Area in nw corner
Townsend's Solitaire (1)
Black-capped Chickadee (1) bird present all autumn persists
Northern Shrike (1a)
Common Redpoll (flock of 10, flock of 29, and 1 solo bird - mostly same area as
goldfinches)
European Starling (6)
Eurasian Collared-Dove (1)
In summary, thought I might run into redpolls everywhere. That was decidedly
NOT the case. In fact I saw NO birds of any kind on the quite localized
sunflower patches along my 100-mile route, until I got to Crow Valley. I was
photographing the large group of goldfinches, frankly surprised at the lack of
siskins and redpolls, when suddenly a flock of 10 redpolls materialized. They
fed on sunflowers beside the goldfinches for 20 minutes, left, and about half
an hour later, the big flock came in loudly to trees overhead briefly, did not
go to the sunflowers, zipped off. The solo bird was in a Siberian Elm just e
of where the host trailer is parked for the summer near the easternmost
outhouse. Sometimes that huge area (1 square mile+) north of the primitive
camping/Mourning Dove Trail area in the northwestern portion of the CG area is
full of sunflowers. Apparently that requires moisture and a lack of grazing at
certain times of the year, which were not met this year. The only significant
sunflower patches in the campground are in that nw corner in the creekbed n of
the shelter.
Dave Leatherman
Fort Collins
--
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 https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
