After Alec Hopping's report I headed out to Barr Lake this morning and had a nice time. The vast majority of the water is frozen but openings remain. The number of birds around sunrise was amazing, but gull and geese numbers dropped drastically as the day warmed up.
A small ice hole near the boat launch had a good number of large gulls including a first year Thayer's. This was a nice place for point blank views. The biggest hole in the ice is best viewed from the banding station. It held a Ross's x Cackling Goose, over forty Herring gulls and a Lesser Black-backed Gull. As the morning steam lifted the gull number began to drop. By the time I made the long walk to the opening in the south west corner of the res the majority of gulls had left and right before I got to look at the geese about half the flock left to leave. I still found a group of 28 Snow and 8 Ross's Goose and a single Greater White-fronted Goose. The flock of dabblers held one male Mexican Duck integrade. The first I've seen showing some of the greenish mallard head color. Overall a fun day and worth checking as good birds could easily still be hiding out there. Nick Moore Boulder CO -- 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/CAEfNQ5kbw702KpPZFgKut4k11G8dsphARZf%2BCwdvGU2b4jpzrw%40mail.gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
