I visited the beautiful Cottonwood Canyon in Baca County today, southwest of Springfield, CO, with 4 birding companions. It was a chilly day (low 50s Farenheit) with intermittent rain showers. We spent 4 hrs there from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 pm. Birds were plentiful, including several resident species that may be of interest to birders, including Ladder-backed Woodpecker, Eastern Phoebe, Bewick's Wren, Curve-billed Thrasher, Prairie Falcon and Lewis's Woodpecker. Migrants included Canvasback, Pied-billed Grebe, Orange-crowned Warbler, and various sparrows (Chipping, Brewer's, Vesper and Lark Sparrows). Rarer migrants included Broad-winged Hawk (one dark and one light phase, both in Las Animas County), Eastern Towhee (female, Baca County), and the eastern subspecies of Blue-gray Gnatcatcher (identified by brighter blue upperparts, especially crown; and a song consisting of a quiet, haphazard warble that lacked the harsh buzzy notes of typical Colorado gnatcatchers; also in Baca County).
At 2:30 pm, in the side canyon opposite the south campsite area (that follows a lush oak/juniper riparian zone past an ancient homestead now in ruins, westward into Las Animas County), Ruth Stewart (from Vermont) declared that she was looking at a woodpecker with a solid brown back and wings and a red patch on the head. It was moving around the trunks and smaller limbs of a tall leafless cottonwood. She watched it for several minutes describing the bird to us. We were unable to see the bird at first, but eventually Mary Backus (from Wisconsin) was able to see the bird for several seconds, corroborating most of the field marks as described by Ruth. I finally saw it through binoculars for about a second and also observed a small-to-medium size woodpecker that was a solid chocolate-brown on the upperparts. As I tried to locate it in a telescope, it dropped down into the dense oaks.
Only one USA woodpecker is uniformly chocolate brown on the back, and that is Arizona Woodpecker, a non-migratory species from southeast Arizona and northwest Mexico. How or why it reached southeast Colorado would be a mystery. However, the oak riparian corridor in this canyon is similar to its typical habitat in Arizona.
For those of you who may be birding in Baca County this weekend, I hope you have a chance to refind and photograph this interesting bird, as it would be a first state record. We did not obtain photos. I might mention that we are all familiar with this species from birding trips to Arizona. Ruth is a careful observer who serves on the Bird Records Committee in Vermont.
The GPS coordinates for the woodpecker sighting is 37.140306, -103.091465. Here is a link to the location in GoogleMaps, for anyone who may wish to know where this brown woodpecker was seen: http://goo.gl/maps/FPcew. Sorry I could not get this posted earlier today.
Nick Komar
Fort Collins, CO (currently in Lamar, CO)
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