[cobirds] Mother of all grackle flocks, Stearns Lake, Boulder County, & other stuff

Hello, Birders.

For more than a year now, there's been a pretty impressive Great-tailed Grackle presence at Stearns Lake, extreme southeastern Boulder County. But the situation there yesterday evening, Thursday, March 21st, was outlandish. The flock was immense, and I was determined to get an accurate count--of the 1, 2, 3, ... n variety, none of this 5, 10, 15, 20, ... crap. One group budded off from the main flock, and I counted 318 birds in that propagule flock; and I estimated that they were maybe 1/5 of the total flock. Most of the rest of the flock was hopelessly down in a corn field, but then a huge chunk of the flock wandered out into the open, lined up on fences, standing on outbuildings, and strewn out across a dirt road. In this group, I counted a fantastic 635 birds, while the 318 others were still accounted for. So, if your'e keeping score, we're up to 953 Great-tailed Grackles. Then something spooked the birds, and a great throng rose up from the corn field; call it another coupla hundred, at least. Being super-safe here, I'll say that there were 1,100 Great-tailed Grackles at Stearns, and I imagine the number is closer to 1,500. The previous record for the state, per eBird, was 500, at the same site, reported by Chuck Hundertmark on January 9, 2013. (On an arcane note, I once held the record, of a mere 338, at Burlington, Kit Carson County, January 2, 2010.)

I'm guessing the flock will be breaking up very soon, as the breeding season is upon us. The next few days will probably be best. It's a wild scene there, sorta Alfred Hitchcock meets The Crossley Guide meets Exodus chapters 7-10.

A few other odds and ends from these past few days:

Wednesday evening, March 20th, on the trail from Valmont Road up north to Boulder Creek: a heard and seen Harris's Sparrow, a heard and seen drake Wood Duck, a heard Greater Yellowlegs, and a seen-only shrikespuh. I was leaning Loggerhead on the shrike (there exist previous winter records for Loggerhead here), but I'm not sure. Also, nice to see lots of American Tree Sparrows, all decked out now in their alternate plumage. The situation with the American Tree Sparrow is an interesting and evolving story, possibly involving a mid-winter molt migration; we'll get that one worked out one of these days. The best birds out there were the glorious Red-winged Blackbirds, singing from every perch, it seemed.

This Friday evening, March 22nd, in the snow and bluster at Erie Reservoir, Boulder County, a nice springy assemblage of waterfowl: lotsa Lesser Scaup, a scaupspuh, Buffleheads back, and several Horned Grebes in various stages of prealternate molt.

Ted Floyd

tedfloyd57@hotmail.com

Lafayette, Boulder County, Colorado