[cobirds] Morgan and Weld Counties; more redpolls

Good evening- today a made a loop from Denver to Jackson Lake, up to Crow Valley, and return.  The best species variety was at Jackson.  There is an area at the southeast corner of Cove Camground (the large one about a quarter mile northeast of the Visitor Center) that I have come to know as Sparrow Corner, for obvious reasons.  In a relatively small area at this location, in addition to dozens of robins and dozens of juncos, were American tree, white-crowned, white-throated (tan striped), Harris's and song sparrows, hermit thrush, and a mountain chickadee (a little far east for this species? I haven't seen them at Jackson previously).  There was also a nice variety of raptors around- red-tails, roughies, an immature bald eagle terrorizing the geese on the lake and a lot of kestrels,  Couldn't turn any of those into a merlin, though.

 

After Jackson I headed north to Crow Valley, which was very quiet.  I walked a circle covering the entire area and the only birds of note were a great horned owl (and-presumably-she was one massive owl) and a hairy woodpecker.  However, I decided to check out the office/maintenance facility up the road to the north, and here I was able to add thirty redpolls to the rapidly growing inventory.  The birds were hanging around the north side of the property around a row of junipers.  They spent most of their time perched in a couple of dead trees by the junipers,and didn't seem to be doing any feeding, just perching.  During the hour I followed them as they moved from tree to tree (they would perch in the tree nearest the road, flush every time a vehicle came by, fly to the farthest tree, and then return to the original tree.  No one ever said finches were all that bright), they did no feeding, although they did visit a small patch of snow to "drink". They seemed to be staying in that area and may be "chaseable".

 

I wandered back to the west, visiting Norma's Grove, where there were no birds, but there was the remnant of a fire (complete with beer cans) that some nimrod built in the middle of the road.  Not much on the grasslands to the west, either, but a quick sunset stop at Windsor Reservoir (never stopped there before- lotta waterfowl!) produced one Ross's goose in with the Canacacks, a couple of later western grebes and some dabblers to round out some shameless list-padding.

Norm Lewis
migrant44@aol.com

Lakewood

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