I neglected to mention, at Lower Queens Reservoir a late-ish Great Egret was also present.
On Saturday, October 21, 2017 at 7:44:54 AM UTC-6, Dan Stringer wrote: > > Yesterday Tom Whitten and I made a quick stop at Melody Tempel Grove (Bent > Co) which was quiet except for 22 Wild Turkeys, Great-horned Owl, Ruby > Crowned Kinglet, Red-breasted Nuthatches and Red-bellied Woodpecker. We > then checked out Nee Noshe, Upper Queens, and Lower Queens Reservoirs > (Kiowa Co). At Nee Noshe we saw a Tan-striped White-throated Sparrow in a > small stand of Locust trees, a Harlan's Red-tailed Hawk, 13 Long-billed > Dowitchers, a Black-bellied Plover, Pectoral Sandpiper, and a few American > Pipits. Not much on the water or shoreline at Upper Queens, amongst the > Tamarisk and Cottonwoods there were Mountain Bluebirds, a Red-headed > Woodpecker, and a Loggerhead Shrike. > > I didn't expect much at Lower Queens but it turned out to be > interesting. At first glance it was littered with shorebirds, turned out > most of them were Long-billed Dowitchers. We counted just under 400 in > several stops around the water's edge, flocks of them everywhere we went. > About 10 Marbled Godwits were mixed in, 30 ish Least Sandpipers, 7 Pectoral > Sandpipers, one each Baird's, Western, and Semipalmated were sorted out in > difficult light. One Greater and 4 Lesser Yellowlegs, 4 more Black-bellied > Plovers, 6 American Avocets, some Clark's Grebe's among the Westerns, and > about 450 American White Pelicans in a tight-row formation along a sandy > bank. There was an Osprey standing in the water between the Pelicans and > Dowitchers, first time I've seen that. The Double-crested Cormorants, 200 > or so, were all on the east end, many of them standing on limbs of large > bushes coming out of the water, like one would see in a spring rookery > setting...but apparently they just like to hang out on branches. We saw > four Bald Eagles, three immature and one adult. Several hundred Sandhill > Cranes were overhead during the day and as we were departing, Tom noticed > that about 30 had come down on the other side of the reservoir to complete > the picture. Lower Queens, smallest of the reservoirs in the area, was > pretty lively on this day. > > Dan Stringer > Larkspur, 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/3a42e5c8-94b7-49bd-bd35-8d11b596b5ea%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
