Saturday 3 May 2014

[cobirds] Boulder County + birds on 5/3

I help John Vanderpoel with a Boulder County Audubon Society tour of eastern Boulder County and nearby spots today.  We had a great day with a total of 115 species for our efforts (over 11 hours).

 

We started at Walden Ponds where the many birds were mainly confined to the domain of “usual suspects” but included some ibis and a Long-billed Dowitcher.  Sombrero Marsh was next and just about the first bird sighted by the initial car to arrive was an American Bittern (which all eventually enjoyed).  We also heard a Sora call.  Baseline Res. had a huge flock of Franklin’s Gulls and a flock of 15 Baird’s Sandpipers plus Hooded Mergansers.

 

Next up was the Fowler Trail just east of Eldorado Springs (which we selected because it had the smallest hoard of Boulderites out embracing Mother Nature) where among the very many birds observed we had good looks at a Broad-winged Hawk.  From there we traversed to CR 109 at Boulder Creek where we saw what Ted Floyd reported, save for Semi-plamated Plover.  Panama was not too interesting other than a few good sparrows like Lincoln’s.

 

Nest was the St. Vrain State Park area with both big white egrets, Foster’s and one Caspian Tern.  The Firestone Gravel Ponds had many unexpected diving duck species and Rough-winged Swallows.

 

Union was as Steve Mlodinow reported plus a single Willet.  At that point, we headed west to Rabbit Mountain where we had a Golden Eagle and Rock Wren.  Next was the Davis household west of Lyons which had a great collection of foothills birds including Western Bluebirds, Loggerhead Shrike, Cassin’s Finch, Lesser Goldfinch and Scrub and Pinyon Jays.  We picked up Harris’s Sparrow’s in Pam Piombino’s yard before our last stop at the bridge over Boulde Creek at 75th St.  We got our last three birds of the day there, Dipper, Eastern Phoebe and Wood Duck.

 

Bill Kaempfer

Boulder

No comments:

Post a Comment