Folks, Today I had the pleasure of an outing with one of the real power birding couples in the country, good friends Chris Wood & Jessie Barry. We tooled around Boulder and Western Weld Counties, mostly checking water bodies but hitting other habitat in-between lakes.
While transiting from Lagerman Res. to McIntosh Lake in Longmont, we noticed a dark corvid flying towards us from the western part of McIntosh. Tail shape soon indicated that the bird was a raven, but it was suspiciously small and had a correspondingly speedy wingbeat. Amazingly, the bird swung left to fly east straight over the road. With instincts honed on many a big day, Chris drove below it and matched its speed. We observed the bird in flight from directly underneath (it was maybe 20 or 25 feet above the road) through the opened sunroof for perhaps 1/4 or 1/3 of a mile, and felt very confident calling it a Chihuahuan Raven based on size and relative proportions of tail, wings, and bill. Macintosh Res. in Longmont has had a major fall-off in bird numbers so not much news from there, but upon departing we noticed a very pale-looking Red-tailed Hawk atop the metal roof of a bank in the NE corner of the intersection of 17th and Hover. It seemed content to stay perched for extended study and photography, and we thought it matched up well for a juv. Krider's Hawk based on the nearly unmarked underparts except for a few small dark spots where the belly band would otherwise be, a pinkish-buffy blush tinting the breast and upper flanks, extensive white mottling on the upperwing coverts (far exceeding the normal "back braces" seen on other Red-tails), and an extremely pale head. Jerry Liguori and Brian Sullivan, authors of the outstanding Krider's Article in Birding Magazine, March 2010 (http://aba.org/birding/v42n2p38.pdf) agree with the ID, also positing that the bird is perhaps female (males of the subspecies often being even lighter overall.) Another stop worth noting was Milavec Lake and the golf course pond & fairways opposite Colorado Blvd. in Firestone/Frederic (AKA Frederic Recreation Area, Godding Hollow Pkwy. & Colorado Blvd., Weld County.) A lone female Surf Scoter and a handful of other diving ducks witnessed thousands of Cackling Geese come and go, with a few Canadas, three Ross's, two Greater White-fronteds, and a Snow Goose mixed in. Adding to the goose diversity were single Snow x Cackling and Ross's x Cackling Goose hybrids (maybe the same two birds Steve Mlodinow had there last year?) With fresh news of the Tundra Swans and redpoll flock at Baseline Res. in Boulder we swung west to check for ourselves. The swans were nice to see, two adults with three youngsters. At first we just heard a few redpoll calls coming from the willows west of Cherryvale Rd., but after a bit the big flock got up and lapped up and down the west shore of the lake a few times. At one of the far orbits I could fit all (or nearly all) of the flock into my viewfinder, and fired off some frames to census. When I got home I carefully counted exactly 60 birds two of the frames with nice spreads of birds, setting a pretty firm lower limit for how many birds were there today. Pics of the Krider's Hawk, Surf Scoter, and Common Redpoll flock can be seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9047968@N02/with/8215743018/#photo_8215743018 Enjoy- Bill Schmoker, Longmont ______________________ • Bill Schmoker • ______________________ http://schmoker.org http://brdpics.blogspot.com [email protected] 720/201-5749 ______________________ -- 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.
