I ran my BBS routes earlier this month; one in Baca County, one in Kit Carson County and one in Yuma County. Overall the results were predictable, though a never-before-seen species on my Baca County route gave me pause... a robin at a farmstead was the first one ever recorded on the route! They are in Springfield, perhaps 20 miles away, so my surprise was centered on the fact I'd never had one on the route before. Incidentally and off-route, I noticed white-winged doves at the Springfield town park (at the water tower), amongst the Eurasian collared and mourning doves, common and great-tailed grackles (I remember having to document my first observation of a great-tailed grackle on this BBS route not too many years ago, now they're everywhere), and of course, robins. One stop on my route in Kit Carson County had me puzzling over sounds of mallards and turkeys coming from a farmstead. Then the call of a peacock made me stick around for further investigation and sure enough a light brown turkey emerged from behind some bushes in the yard. Obviously, none of those guys got counted. I recorded greater prairie chickens at a couple of stops on my Yuma County route, as usual. However, at one stop it seemed the booming was coming from a specific point whilst the cackling and laughing seemed to be spread out over a wide area. A roadside conversation with a local rancher revealed that he'd seen a prairie chicken hen cross the road in front of him that morning with 13 chicks in tow, so it seems apparent that the breeding season for these birds is fairly well extended. A red-headed woodpecker on this route was excavating a nest cavity, while a pair I'd seen at Sandsage SWA near Wray the day before, not far from my route, were feeding young. I also recorded 5 dickcissels at my last stop on this route, then saw/heard several more within a mile as I drove away. I've never had that kind of concentration of dickcissels on any of my routes before; and there were a couple at Sandsage the day before, as well. Keep Smilin', Kevin Corwin west Centennial Arapahoe County
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