I spent some time on Friday at Cheesman Park in Denver. Among the usual suspects were two surprises: an American Pipit and a yellow-bellied / red-naped sapsucker. I have virtually no meaningful experience with either type of sapsucker, so I'm posting to see if anyone can provide some feedback on the sapsucker, low quality photos of which are here: https://birderbyaccident.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/cheesman-park-sapsucker/
The sapsucker lacked a red-nape and appeared to have a complete black border around the red on its chin, which seem to suggest yellow-bellied sapsucker. At the same time, the bird has white marks down the back in two rows and the black marking on the face are relatively thick compared to the white markings, which seem, as I understand it, to suggest a red-naped sapsucker. There is also a titch of white on the chin of the bird that is visible in some of the photos, which is also consistent with the red-naped sapsucker. I'm leaning toward a female red-naped sapsucker lacking a red nape, but am by no means confident in that ID. I birded a portion of Cheesman today and did not see either the pipit or the sapsucker. There was a group of 11 turkey vultures northeast of the adjacent Denver Botanic Gardens rising in a thermal. My apologies for not posting this yesterday, when someone else could have tracked down the bird. Next time... Feel free to respond to me directly by email. And thanks in advance, - Jared Del Rosso Denver, 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/51246dfd-9207-4ea3-a704-699aac6af21c%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
