I’m quite fond of Christmas Bird Counts. I like how they make each and every bird, even the most common, count. (Another pigeon!)
But this year, I won’t be able to meaningfully participate in a count. And my home circle (based near deKoevend Park in west Centennial (Arapahoe) and with a radius of three miles) is squished between the two Denver-area count circles. This means that “my” birds won’t count! So to get into the CBC spirit and affirm my area birds’ existence, I took it upon myself to do a count-style day out in a portion of my home circle. I chose my favorite quadrant, the “upper right” portion that covers the Marjorie Perry Nature Preserve, the surrounding High Line Canal Trail, a portion of the Little Dry Creek trail, and Chapel Hill Cemetery. For convenience sake, I transformed that quadrant into a square (lopping off the curves and so losing Blackmer Lake). The resulting area I birded is bounded by S. University on the west, E. Belleview on the north, S. Holly on the east, and E. Arapahoe on the south (map here <https://goo.gl/maps/aLP8eXeQEw82>). It’s an area of about 4 square miles. I woke, Sunday, at 4 a.m. to owl, with the hope of getting my Great Horned Owl count into double digits. After letting my dog out and swallowing the coffee pot whole, I stepped outside to hear a pair of Great Horns calling. Good start. I stopped briefly at Chapel Hill Cemetery, where another pair was calling from the surrounding neighborhood. On the High Line Canal near E. Orchard Rd, I picked up three more, including one who absolutely bellows. By 5:30, I’d already had seven Great Horns, and there were at least 3 – perhaps as many as 5 – in my area that I hadn’t yet encountered. Unfortunately, snow beat me to Marjorie Perry Nature Preserve, where I was hoping to pick up 2-4 more along the High Line Canal into and out of the preserve. It started as light and wet flakes. But nothing seemed to be calling through it. It soon became heavier and colder, so I headed home to sit it out. I took an unsatisfying, caffeine-ridden nap until about 7:00 and woke to the snow having already stopped (the forecast was predicting 9:30). I counted House Sparrows in my yard—my only ones for the day, refilled my feeders and birdbath, and spotted a Townsend’s Solitaire (my first of four). Back at Chapel Hill Cemetery (with my dog and my mother-in-law’s Shih Tzu), I found only the most common of the neighborhood birds. No juncos, towhees, nuthatches, or woodpeckers even, perhaps owing to the presence of a Cooper’s Hawk (the first of two), which was perched in the corner of the cemetery that’s usually good for sparrows. I dropped the dogs off at home and headed back to Marjorie Perry Nature Preserve. There, I quickly spotted a Harlan’s Red-tail on the eastern edge of the preserve, where it’s been for the better part of a month. (At least I think it’s a Harlan’s…it looks an awful like birds 1b & 1c in this article from *Birding* <https://www.aba.org/birding/v42n2p30.pdf> and its tail is almost entirely whitish-gray.) Near it, a lively bush contained a Spotted Towhee, a White-crowned Sparrow, and a White-throated Sparrow (the best bird of the day). The preserve’s ponds were, when I went, mostly frozen over. Three mallards and a coot hung out near the shore of the largest of the ponds. On my way out of the preserve, a Bald Eagle circled overhead. Later in the day, I’d add a few Red-breasted Nuthatch, three Cedar Waxwing, a pair of American Tree Sparrow, and a few more Solitaires. Nothing unexpected, but birds I enjoy seeing nonetheless. I found a few Cackling Geese amid the Canada Geese at West Middle School (one of those places you only stop because you feel obligated to count each and every bird). A kestrel (the second of three) was perched on the northeast corner of the school. Closer to dusk, I pursued Great Horns #8, 9, & 10. I decided to do this by walking the High Line out of Marjorie Perry toward Orchard. But I made a strategic mistake, walking too far and ending up, at dusk, back where I’d started the AM effort at owling. Though I quickly added one owl, the likely partner to the bellowing one, by the time I walked back to the stretch of trail where I might have added “new” owls, the sun had set and most of the hooting had stopped. In the distance, so much seemed to sound like Great Horns or screech owls – dogs barking, children playing, and even the cars on Belleview. *The Ones that Got Away* A flock of white-bellied ducks, arranged in a single line, flew over Marjorie Perry in the AM, too distant for me to pick out what they were. I thought I heard a Virginia Rail call once at Marjorie Perry, but nothing responded to playback. I thought I saw a Ruby-crowned Kinglet along the Little Dry Creek, but I didn’t trust my eyes and couldn’t get the better look that I wanted. I may have heard a Killdeer in a field along the High Line Canal. But there were too many starlings around to believe in that. (A few of them in the area do nearly spot-on impressions.) And I thought I heard something I couldn't ID by sound in the reeds on the east side of Marjorie Perry, but I never saw anything but Song Sparrows there. (And there were a lot of starlings around...) *“Low” Counts* I was a little surprised to only get one White-crowned Sparrow. I only counted three Spotted Towhees, even though, in a given week, I could probably see or hear about ten among my yard, the cemetery, the preserve, and the High Line leading west-ish out of the preserve. Four Townsend’s Solitaires were probably par for the course, but I thought I might get a few more. A count of a dozen House Sparrows seems low, but there are surprisingly few of them (for now) in the Greenwood Village area. I’ve yet to see them at Marjorie Perry Preserve, in fact, in around 100 visits to it. *The Missed* None of… Bushtit, Mourning Doves (though I haven’t seen them in this portion of my home circle in a while), Brown Creepers, Mountain Chickadee (haven’t seen them yet this winter), Sharp-shins, Hairy Woodpeckers, Northern Shrikes, or flyover hawks or falcons of note. I hoped to spot a Snow Goose among the nearly 1,000 Canada Geese that flew over or munched in the area fields. One day, but not yesterday. (Based on the Denver (Urban) count data, it looks like you have to look through about 3,000-4,000 white-cheeked geese to find a snow goose around Denver.) Full “count” figures (37 species) is below. - Jared Del Rosso Centennial, CO Cackling Goose 5 Canada Goose 830 (Somewhere between an estimate and a count) Cackling/Canada Goose 30 (Same here, based on smallish ones flying over) Mallard 3 Cooper's Hawk 2 Bald Eagle 1 Red-tailed Hawk 10 American Coot 1 Ring-billed Gull 4 California Gull 1 Rock Pigeon 106 Eurasian Collared-Dove 17 Eastern Screech-Owl 2 Great Horned Owl 8 Belted Kingfisher 2 Downy Woodpecker 2 Northern Flicker 10 American Kestrel 3 Blue Jay 17 Black-billed Magpie 86 American Crow 105 Black-capped Chickadee 31 Red-breasted Nuthatch 5 White-breasted Nuthatch 3 Townsend's Solitaire 4 American Robin 98 European Starling 33 Cedar Waxwing 3 American Tree Sparrow 2 Dark-eyed Junco 29 White-crowned Sparrow 1 White-throated Sparrow 1 Song Sparrow 12 Spotted Towhee 3 Red-winged Blackbird 100 House Finch 104 American Goldfinch 1 House Sparrow 12 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. 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