COBirders, Yesterday around midday I called up Bill Maynard and Lisa Edwards to see if they could do a spur-of-the-moment trip to Aurora Reservoir to go look for the Slaty-backed Gull. They were both up for it so we met up and headed off. Unfortunately, we had no luck with the Slaty-backed but we did have a few other things of note. Maybe the best thing all day was a PIED-BILLED GREBE that maybe can't fly as it had enough water to take off on or maybe it just felt safer not flying. It had been in a hole in the ice across the reservoir from where we were just doing its thing, then while scanning the gulls we noticed it coming across the ice. Not such a big deal maybe except that it was being actively "chased" by a NORTHERN HARRIER. It would get up and run as fast as it could until the Harrier would get close at which point it would stop and defend itself. I think it was also catching its breath because sometimes it would sit there for longer than it needed to. This went on almost the whole time we watched it which was for maybe 100 to 200 yards. I used Google Earth to get a rough measurement of the distance between the two holes and it appears to be about 800 yards or .5 miles. Quite a little feat for this tiny little bird. It did make it to the other hole safely only to later do it again to another hole but this was a much shorter distance.
Here is a list of the notables: 1 GLAUCOUS-WINGED GULL (adult bird and admittedly I would have liked a little better look at the bird just to try and rule out any hybrid combo) 1 ICELAND GULL 4 Glaucous Gulls (2 1st cycle, 1 2nd cycle and 1 adult, the adult was not the same adult that I saw there last Friday as this bird is huge versus the fairly dainty bird from last week) x Thayer's Gulls (there seemed to be a lot of both adults and youngsters) We had the five regularly occurring species of geese including a few hybrid WHITExWHITE-CHEEKED geese. I sure would nto be surprised if there was a Brant hiding in amongst all the white-cheeked geese there. ----- 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/1389384392.17969.YahooMailNeo%40web121506.mail.ne1.yahoo.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
