Hello, Birders.
Hannah and Andrew and I are back from the 12th annual High Plains Snow Goose
Festival, held this past Thursday-Sunday, February 20-23, 2014. The highlight
was a very surprising, bright red, adult male, softly warbling, ridiculously
cooperative Pine Grosbeak feeding in a cottonwood at the far eastern end of
"The Black Hole," below the dam at Two Buttes Reservoir, Baca County, on a
perfectly still and sunny Saturday afternoon, February 22nd. Definitely one for
the "Go Figure" category.
The rest of the story:
We started counting birds in Kit Carson, Cheyenne County, late Thursday
afternoon, February 20th. Our tally was one (1) Eurasian Collared-Dove. If it
weren't for collared-doves, I don't think there'd be any birds at all in Kit
Carson. Can anybody think of a more birdless town in Colorado?
On approach to Eads, Kiowa County, a bit after sundown, we saw about 500 Snow
Geese flying above US-287.
The next morning, Friday, February 21st, Hannah and Andrew and I visited
Thurston Reservoir, northern Prowers County, where found Snow Goose Festival
impresario Linda Groat, keynote speaker Greg Miller, and some birds, among them
~200 Snow Geese, 3 Cinnamon Teal, 607 Northern Pintails, 1 Golden Eagle, 1
dark-morph Rough-legged Hawk, and ~500 Sandhill Cranes. You can hear one of the
Sandhill Cranes here: http://xeno-canto.org/167848.
Friday afternoon, we went to John Martin Reservoir, Bent County, with Greg
Miller and seven other Snow Goosers. Hasty campground was a bit slow, although
Greg found us a Yellow-rumped Warbler or two, and Jill White Smith tracked down
some Marsh Wrens. Above the dam, it was avian mayhem at 4:15 p.m., as 7,000
Snow Geese and a few dozen Ross's Geese put up. Also 35 Bald Eagles, 1 Golden
Eagle, and a trio of male Mountain Bluebirds.
Saturday morning, February 22nd, we birded with a dozen other Snow Goosers
along Willow Creek, right below Lamar Community College, Prowers County. We
found a beautiful adult male Red-bellied Woodpecker, an Eastern White-breasted
Nuthatch ("Carolina" Nuthatch) saying yarnk yarnk, and at least three dueling
male Northern Cardinals. Here is a photo of one of the cardinals:
http://tinyurl.com/Jill-White-Smith-redbird. Here's audio of the same bird:
http://xeno-canto.org/167881. Here's audio of the Red-bellied Woodpecker:
http://xeno-canto.org/167880. And here's audio of the nuthatch:
http://xeno-canto.org/167879.
Saturday afternoon, 32 of us birded Two Buttes, Baca County. The first
vertebrate we saw was a porcupine, one of six we would see during our ramble.
The next vertebrate was a Mountain Bluebird, the first of at least 45 we saw
that afternoon. Next up: a flock of incredibly high Sandhill Cranes, about 175
of them, drifting northeast toward the Platte River in Nebraska. (Thanks to
Domonique Jones for pointing these out; we might not otherwise have detected
them.) Other sightings included 2 Golden Eagles, 1 Ferruginous Hawk, more
Sandhill Cranes, a Great Horned Owl, a Yellow-shafted Flicker, a Chihuahuan
Raven, and the aforementioned Pine Grosbeak. Here's a photo of the grosbeak:
http://tinyurl.com/Debbie-Barnes-Shankster-PiGr.
Sunday morning, February 23, 10 of us trekked west to Higbee Cemetery &
environs, Otero County. It was cold and cloudy at the outset, but the sun came
out eventually. At the second homestead beyond the cemetery, we beheld a
grotesque and fascinating assemblage of hundreds of corvids and columbids.
Mixed in with all the Rock Pigeons and Eurasian Collared-Doves was a
White-winged Dove. The 100+ ravens were mainly Commons, it seemed to me; also
crows, a Blue Jay, and a Woodhouse's Scrub-Jay screeching its head off. Better
than Hitchcock. Elsewhere in the canyon, we saw three widely scattered
Ladder-backed Woodpeckers, three Canyon Towhees, a flyover Pine Siskin, and an
adult male Cooper's Hawk that just soared for the longest time. Townsend's
Solitaires were everywhere, and we found another flock of Mountain Bluebirds.
Listen to one of the ravens (and an interesting non-raven) here:
http://xeno-canto.org/168035. And here's a recording of one of the
Ladder-backed Woodpeckers: http://xeno-canto.org/168039.
After lunch on Sunday, six of us went up to Lake Henry, Crowley County, where
we found an ungodly number of Common Goldeneyes, a Loggerhead Shrike, more
Mountain Bluebirds, and a maybe-an-Eastern Bluebird (moving car, dirt road,
kids throwing things in the back seat...). After Lake Henry, we proceeded to
Box Springs Pond, northern Crowley County. Greg Miller and I agreed that the 53
Redheads there seemed like 2-3% of the number of Redheads we saw at Lake Henry;
and that the number of Lake Henry Redheads was about half the number of the
goldeneyes there. Do the math.
The drive north through Lincoln County, on state route 71, yielded several nice
light-morph Rough-legged Hawks, a maybe-a-Merlin flying straight away, and a
lone Eurasian Collared-Dove at Karval Crossing.
On I-70 in Elbert County we saw a buzzy thing fly past. It could have been a
woodcock. It could have been a dove. It could have been a diving-petrel.
And we wrapped up our weekend with a spooky Great Horned Owl perched on a pole
right along I-70 near Strasburg, Arapahoe County.
Here's a thought. This was Hannah Floyd's 7th consecutive High Plains Snow
Goose Festival. She's grown up with the festival! Here are some of her
highlights from years past:
February 24, 2008. Trumpeter Swan, John Martin Reservoir, Bent County.February
21, 2009. Vesper Sparrow, Mike Higbee State Wildlife Area, Prowers
County.February 27, 2010. Carolina Wren, Lamar Community College, Prowers
County.February 27. 2011. Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Higbee Cemetery, Otero
County.February 25, 2012. McCown's Longspur, Granada, Prowers County.February
24, 2013. Hoary Redpoll, Linda Groat's house, Bent County.February 22, 2014.
Pine Grosbeak, Two Buttes, Baca County.
Always a good time down there in Lamar in late February!
Ted Floyd
Lafayette, Boulder County, Colorado
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