Hello, Birders.
Hannah and Andrew and I spent this chilly, overcast afternoon, Sunday, Feb. 10, at Teller Farms, Boulder County, & environs.
As Bill Kaempfer has noted, there are gulls at Teller Lake No. 5. I suspect Hannah and Andrew's popcorn and hamburger buns may have something to do with that... Anyhow, we saw a beautiful adult Thayer's Gulls, an ugly adult Thayer's Gull, and about the same Ring-billed Gull count that Bill came up with.
Lots of nice birds north of Valmont, on the way to Boulder Creek, among them:
A mysterious high-flier, waaay up there, that landed in a tall tree along Boulder Creek and started yank-yanking--a nice Eastern White-breasted Nuthatch. Eastern White-breasted Nuthatch has been noted off and on here for at least 10 years. This stream-crossing is fascinating for all its "East Coast" fauna--fireflies, Least Flycatchers, American Redstarts, Orchard Orioles, Eastern Warbling-Vireos, and so forth.
One each of Prairie Falcon, Prairie Merlin, and American Kestrel.
One Northern Shrike.
One adult dark-morph Harlan's Hawk.
One sighting of Edie Israel.
A fascinating "white-cheeked" goose flock. One Canada Goose was leucistic. Two Cackling Geese were very small and darkish, notably more so than two "normal" (presumably Richardson's) Cackling Geese nearby; could they have been minima? Also curious were two parvipes-like Canada Geese with nice dark breasts; could these have been occidentalis? We cursed Steve Mlodinow, and moved on...
Speaking of Steve Mlodinow, we saw (and heard) 3 perfectly typical Common Ravens and 5 mystery ravens.
Some other odds and ends. A beautiful drake Hooded Mergansers, 2 sub-adult Bald Eagles, 1 Pied-billed Grebe looking confused amid the many Mallards in the creek, and a troupe of coyotes.
Ted Floyd
tedfloyd57@hotmail.com
Lafayette, Boulder County, Colorado
No comments:
Post a Comment