COBirders, Glenn Walbek and I headed out rather early this morning to head down to southeast CO. We wanted to try for Western Screech-Owl but unfortunately we did not leave quite early enough. We decided to try around Rocky Ford SWA and we got there just before 5 AM. There was nobody there and almost no wind so conditions were decent, less than five minutes later the hunters started to show up. It seemed like car after car, so we finally headed out as the breaks between car noise was just not enough.
Next we poked around John Martin reservoir State Park and looked at the many thousands of birds on the water but were unable to find anything rare on the water. We did have a number of LAPLAND LONGSPURs go over. Next we decided to follow up on the RUSTY BLACKBIRDs that both Jeff Jones and Duane Nelson had reported to cobirds. We went to the location described by Duane and immediately found two of the Rusty's. They just sat in a tree the whole time we watched them, maybe 30 minutes worth. There were over 100 American Wigeons on Lake Hasty and a lot on John Martin that we looked at closely hoping to re-find the previously reported Eurasian Wigeon. No luck for us but that bird could easily still be there. Also as we were leaving the Lake Hasty area Glenn spotted a GREATER ROADRUNNER standing on top of a rock just as you start to go up the hill from where you leave the campground area. Later in the day we got a call from Duane Nelson (thank you) and he told us he had seen a Jaeger at Blue Lake again just briefly. So we started to head back west as we were in Lamar at this point and we picked up Duane and headed out to Blue. Glenn found the bird sitting on the water way out on the north side. After much watching, the bird finally got up and harassed the gulls and gave us all quite a show. Eventually the bird did come over towards the south side of the lake where we were and gave us decent looks. Thank you again to Duane for giving us the call today and for originally finding and getting the word out on this bird. I apologize for any mistakes, I literally keep falling asleep while typing this. Good luck to anyone that might head out there, be patient as it would sit for long periods of time. ----- Mark Peterson Colorado Springs -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/1384058083.40906.YahooMailNeo%40web121506.mail.ne1.yahoo.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
