I was up on Guanella Pass yesterday to look at the ptarmigan. Thank you to Mark Amershek for great directions.
The exciting part: As I was coming back down, I saw a small flock of birds land high up in a tree. I thought to myself, hooray, rosy-finches! When I was able to get one in my view, I about dropped my snowshoe poles as it was a blatantly obvious, and very beautiful, WHITE-WINGED CROSSBILL. I barely had time to thoroughly admire it before the flock saw me and vacated the tree. I watched as they flew to the north, then turned west and eventually out of sight behind some other tall trees in the area. I observed two males flying in the flock of ten Red Crossbills. The location is the very last hairpin turn before the last straight-way to the summit parking lots. It is before you come to the big Guanella Pass sign. Please note that when I was there, the road was closed two miles from the summit. I cannot imagine the weekend snowstorm has made it any better. Snowshoes were not required to hike the road, but again, may have changed since Friday. You will need snowshoes if you want to look for ptarmigan. -- 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/6958386d-5199-4314-9a29-9c3ba5648e41%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
