Birders,
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On Saturday, Matt Hofeditz, Archer Silverman and I did our COBC big day in Conejos County. Our daylight started with scrambling up a mountainside at 12,000 ft, and ended nearly sprinting up a canyon in the dying glow of twilight as the very last passerines settled for the night.
The evening before the challenge, we changed our plans and set out on a different and less familiar route than originally planned, thinking that we might have a shot at an ambitious goal: seeing both White-tailed Ptarmigan and Black-throated Sparrow in the same county, on the same day.
Starting at 4:00 am, we encountered our first bird of the day with some whining Northern Saw-Whet Owls. On the way up Cornwall Mountain, we tried for Boreal Owl in some habitat that had looked great on satellite imagery, but on the ground it was clear that the beetle kill had severely degraded this forest. Another Saw-Whet Owl gave a whine call up here, and by the end of the day we'd counted four Northern Saw-Whet Owls, one of two total owl species for the day.
On Cornwall Mountain, we drove as far as my Subaru could safely reach before scrambling up a rocky ATV track to reach treeline. By the end of this hike, we found ourselves well behind schedule and without ptarmigan, but having enjoyed a fun morning in cool habitat, with many other quality montane and tundra species. We'd spent until 10 am above 10,000 ft.
Several stops later we were approaching John James Canyon for foothills and desert birds, our last stop of the day. A navigation mishap led us driving well down the wrong two-track and delayed our eventual arrival at the canyon trailhead until just as the sun was setting. As we half sprinted up the canyon, the last of the Rock Wren calls were echoing across the quiet canyon, and as we slowed to catch our breath and proceeded at a walking pace, our long sought-after Sagebrush Sparrow foraged in the sage a few feet ahead. When we arrived at our plotted pin for Black-throated Sparrow, the last of the passerines had gone to sleep, and our last addition to the day was the welcome "poor-WE-il" of a Common Poorwill from the sides of the canyon.
We ended the day with 130 confirmed species of birds, including a "Virginia's/Nashville Warbler" that we left at the "Leiothlypis sp" level, that counted towards our total because neither Virginia's, nor Nashville Warbler were on our list. This was 210% of our county par, and we later discovered that this fell short by 2% of par to the Dolores Dippers. Our most unexpected bird of the day was a Northern Parula in a mixed flock at a random county road stop, and some of the most painful misses that we ran out of time to find despite being readily findable in this county included Woodhouse's Scrub-Jay, Bushtit, and Gray Catbird. Here's our trip report.
Yes, we would have liked to win. In the end, we were out-birded by the Dippers.
Until next year.
David Tønnessen
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