I led a San Luis valley birding trip on Friday, Sept 7, and 11 of us had a great day afield. We stayed on the west side of the Valley as this seems to be where most of the birds are congregating during this outstanding fall migration. We tallied 94 species and the best birds were 7 species of warblers including Townsend's and Northern Waterthrush, Osprey, Lincoln's Sparrow, Stilt Sandpiper, and Burrowing Owl.
As we finished up Cat Creek and were driving back to our vehicles, we found an apparent road killed bird on the side of the road and stopped to examine it. After considerable head scratching and wonderment, we determined it to be a seabird! And more specifically a Jaeger of some variety. As long as I have been keeping records in the San Luis Valley, I have no records for Jaegers here. However, I have long suspected they pass through our area and that sooner or later one might be found. So I would invite you to look at the images (roadkilled) of the bird, and let me know what species you think it is. It had a noticeable broken wing on one side and was found on the side of the road. We estimated its length at 15-16 inches. It was still rather ripe and was killed in the last few days by our estimate. I have posted a number of pictures of the bird on my website for your perusal. Look in the folder "Jaeger Plus Warblers" and let me know what you think. We were all very excited by this strange and bewildering ending to our adventure. https://johnrawinski.zenfolio.com/ John Rawinski Monte Vista, 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/01384e63-058b-4f59-9cc4-5c8c4c1f8996%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
