I co-led an all-day outing with Judy Scherpelz (exec. director for the Rocky Mountain Raptor Program) for her annual Birds of Prey class, today with about 20 participants. The purpose of the trip is, not surprisingly, to search for raptors that are covered in the curriculum of this fabulous class that introduces these birds to the general public. We had terrific weather and hit several hot-spots in Larimer and Weld counties, with varying success but at least a few notable sightings.
Our most common raptor was predictably the Red-tailed Hawk. Most all the individuals we spotted were typical calurus, but we did see a lovely dark-morph individual in the wooded area just north of the golf course in the Ptarmigan Ridge subdivision near Larimer CR 5 near I-25. We also had an interesting heavily marked bird (intermediate?) at Watson Lake late in the day.
The next most common was the Northern Harrier, with several individuals (male, female, and juvenile) affording nice looks along our winding route throughout the day.
We also tallied a few Bald and Golden Eagles. The Balds were seen at Fossil Creek and at the Ptarmigan Ridge spot, perched around where their old nest was located before being blown down sometime in the past year or two. The highlight Golden was ably spotted by class participant Britney, as it perched quite inconspicuously on the steep face of Goat Rock that overlooks Watson Lake. In fact when she initially pointed the bird out to me, I was pretty sure it would turn out to be a Common Raven when I got the scope on it. I was happy to be proven wrong.
The shocking disappointment of the day came when driving northward along Weld CR 27 northward between WCR 90 and 120. To my amazement we found virtually nothing raptorwise along the route except several American Kestrels. Judy and I were certain we'd at least pick up a couple Ferruginous Hawks or Prairie Falcons along the way, but on this glorious Saturday they too apparently were taking the day off, and thus were nowhere to be found. It certainly wasn't for our lack of searching that we missed them.
Despite this setback, Judy made up for it convincingly with a "drive-up Merlin". She perfectly predicted during our trip-planning this morning that we might find a Merlin at this one isolated residence located not far from the WCR 27 route, and sure enough when we drove up in our multiple vans, we found the bird (a female 'prairie' race, I believe) perched in a tree right by the road. Everyone in all the vans got great looks at it even though no one got out of the cars (not wanting to spook it, of course). I personally was very impressed to get such an 'easy' Merlin.
While most of the participants focused on raptors, I did sneak in a few quick looks at waterfowl while at Fossil Creek reservoir. The best sightings there were
3 Greater White-fronted Geese, and
4 Snow Geese (1 was a Blue Goose)
In the end, everyone seemed to get a lot out of the experience, and I was happy to be a part of what was the first real birding field trip for a goodly number of participants. I hope they all got infected by the birding bug even just a fraction as badly as I already have it.
Eric DeFonso
Boulder, CO
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