[cobirds] A report from Phillips County (mostly), Jan 7

CoBirders,

Have you birded in Phillips County lately? I didn't think so. I noticed eBird had no data submitted for Phillips since two checklists in the first week of December 2021. In general there is very low visitation to remote and little-birded Phillips in the winter. For one handy measure, eBird has just 28 complete checklists submitted for the whole county in the first week of January prior to 2022. For comparison, my heavily-birded home county of Jefferson has 4,250+ complete lists for the same week.

I like Phillips County. It is way out there from my home, but easy to access. It's small, with very limited natural habitat and habitat variety, and there is a paucity of water. You have to work for birds, but is great for prairie birds and migrant possibilities. With so little coverage. It seems like discoveries are out there, and serious birding makes a meaningful contribution of information, while having a good time. And there is the beauty. 

So I went yesterday, leaving again at o'dark thirty so to be all the way out on Phillips back roads before first light. I focused on the southern half of the county, south of Hwy 6, and worked east, reaching the sandhills habitat of the southeast corner of Phillips. Then, after a dip into Yuma County I went north along the east edge of the state, then west to Holyoke, Frenchman Creek SWA and Haxtun. I submitted 33 checklists for Phillips, sampling along about 78 miles of road.

The day was cold at 3 to 5 degrees most of the morning, but thankfully it was quite calm so it was bearable. There was snow cover on all the fields, so larks and such were visible and in some areas were concentrated along roads, as they do. The southern part of Phillips where I focused is all agricultural, with more irrigated land in the southeast than the southwest parts of the county. The few meager streams are all seasonal with broken corridors of mostly sparse small trees. There are the usual hedgerows and ranch groves. Low hills with large areas of sand sage interspersed with ag. fields occupy the south part of the county south of Holyoke, continuing south into more extensive sand hills in Yuma. 

I found 37 species in Phillips, which I note is about 3 times more than I found in a similar effort in Elbert's prairie at the end of December. Being mostly open prairie, birds of the open country were the most frequent. Horned Larks were most abundant, with over 10,900 estimated on the checklists. They were pretty much everywhere, but some fields had flocks of several hundred up to 3000. Lapland Longspurs were with them in some fields, with about 1,360 estimated. I heard the calls of a Snow Bunting at one field along CR 27 near CR 10, where there were many larks and longspurs. I had hoped to encounter Greater Prairie Chickens, and found them along three roads, with good numbers. Most were first encountered as they were perched up on power lines and poles, some in groups up to 33 prairie-chix. They were all in sandhills habitat at CR 2 and CR 61 in Phillips close to Yuma, and along CR 58 in Yuma. I was in these areas 8-9 am.

Raptors in Phillips included 4 Northern Harriers, 8 Red-tailed Hawks, 14 Rough-legged Hawks (two dark morph), 2 Ferruginous Hawks (both dark), 1 Short-eared Owl, 1 Am. Kestrel, 3 Prairie Falcons, and 3 Nor. Shrikes. Other open country birds were Western Meadowlarks (uncommon), American Goldfinches (rare but for one big flock of over 160), and 2 Brewer's Blackbirds (the only blackbirds I had in Phillips and filtered as rare in eBird for the date). Three Common Redpolls were in sunflowers with the big goldfinch flock at CR 12 west of CR 61. 

Birds in hedgerows, weedy areas and the ranch groves included some I was happy to find in Phillips: Red-bellied Woodpecker and Spotted Towhee in a nice ranch grove at CR 61, and a female Northern Cardinal and 4 Eastern Bluebirds at Frenchman Creek SWA. Two sparrows were common at these habitats - Am. Tree Sparrow (289) and Gambel's White-crowned Sparrow (283), and several other "regular" species were less numerous: Nor. Flicker (2), Blue Jay (4), Am. Crow (2), Townsend's Solitair (2), Am. Robin (166), Cedar Waxwing (6), House Finch (8), Dark-eyed Junco (60), and Harris;s Sparow (1). The towns of Holyoke and Haxtun were nearly bird free, and sadly the beloved Haxtun sewage ponds were frozen.

After birding Phillips I checked out Jumbo and Prewitt Reservoirs and found both were completely frozen. There were 2 Common Redpolls at Jumbo, in sunflowers. I saw a small group of Snow Geese in one field near Prewitt. So a question: when the reservoirs are frozen over, do the large numbers of Snow and Ross's Geese that gather at them in late fall move on to other regions? Do they stay regionally if all the big water is frozen? 

Here are a couple morning vistas from Phillips.

Sunrise over Fiddler Peak, nearly the highest point in Phillips at 4,022

Pretty dawn colors on the winter prairie

David Suddjian

Ken Caryl Valley

Littleton, CO

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