Carrie Olson and I decided to spend the morning at a point near the northeast corner of Timnath Reservoir as part of the annual Big Sit. I have done a few in the east, and this was my first one ever in Coloardo. Unfortunately, it is fairly late in the year for good songbird migration but since the waterbirds are moving pretty good right now we decided to focus on a spot that let us see a good chunk of the reservoir while still having a few trees around for songbirds.
The morning started off great with a number of lingering shorebirds as well as a huge gull flock. We were able to pick up Sanderling, Black-bellied Plover, Pectoral Sandpiper, both Yellowlegs, Wilson's Snipe, and American Avocet as part of a 12 shorebird day. A single Franklin's Gull was a nice pickup and an immature Sabine's Gull gave us our biggest surprise of the day. The dabbling ducks moved through in numbers with all the expected species present. Diving ducks were a little tougher to come by with a few misses we hope to pick up this evening. A flock of Ruddy Ducks and a single Lesser Scaup hid in the western section of the reservoir not visible from the circle, but most of the expected grebe species as well as an American Coot finally swam far enough east to be visible from our circle. Raptors were very few and far between, but I spotted a distant Cooper's Hawk circling in the air a few minutes before calling it a morning.
Although the songbirds were not the highlight, we did ok with a few lingering species like Barn Swallow, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, House Wren, and Orange-crowned Warbler. American Pipits and Horned Larks were around in good numbers this morning. Many large flocks of blackbirds flew over for most of the morning giving us a decent diversity, with two Great-tailed Grackles being the highlights. I did have a Lesser Goldfinch (pretty rare at Timnath) while walking around looking for migrant songbirds, but unfortunately it wasn't within (or even close to) the 17-foot diameter Big Sit circle.
We are going to head back out this evening to see if we don't have to settle for Rock Pigeon as our 76th and final new species for the day within the Big Sit circle.
We also made a quick stop at Warren Lake on the way home so Carrie could see her lifer Parasitic Jaeger.
Good Birding and stay tuned for the much less exciting 2nd half of the Timnath Big Sit later this evening,
Andy Bankert
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