In light of some of the "odd" reports showing up on the list today, I thought I'd add a few highlights (and oddities) from my Denver Museum monthly birding outing yesterday. We followed a route that took us from Denver to the experimental station property north of Ault, east through the western Pawnee to the Adams and Bunker Reservoir, south to Crow Valley, down Road 392 to Kersey and Road 59 Pond, west to Loloff and Lower Latham, and finally concluding at Beebe Draw. Like some of the previous reports, our results were notable not so much because of species but rather assemblages. Here are some highlights:
Western Pawnee: we had a chilly start and the roads were snow-covered and icy. Open patches of ground produced a few great looks at both longspurs and tons of horned larks. As we worked our way east it became clear that the Bird of the Day would be loggerhead shrike- we encountered them everywhere, sometimes in small flocks (a situation that I have never experienced before). Somewhere around thirty I lost count. Very encouraging in light of the declining status of this bird. The next "flocker" was kestrel- we saw dozens of them in groups of as many as nine. Again, pretty unusual for this bird. Next came Swainson's hawk. Since I ran this trip a couple of weeks earlier than usual this year due to tour obligations, I don't know how these birds normally complete their migration- do they "kettle" north (as they do in the fall) and then disperse for breeding? We saw groups of as many as ten hanging together.
Crow Valley: migrants were virtually absent and trees were not even beginning to leaf out. Migrants limited to three orange-crowned warblers, though we managed a sharp-shinned hawk and a number of birds behaving very amorously, including blue jays, downy woodpeckers, common grackles and few other of the usual suspects.
On the trek down to Kersey we turned up a mountain plover and a nice variety of raptors- bald eagle, Swainson's and red-tails, furrug, and more kestrels and shrikes.
Road 59 Pond: was infested with birds- tons of ducks (mostly dabblers with some lesser scaup and bufflehead mixed in. Great-tailed grackles seem to be displacing some of the yellow-headed blackbirds in the marshes. A few white-faced ibis were in the area, and there was a nice variety of shorebirds, including dowitchers, godwits (no rarites of either group), peeps (semi-palms, least, Baird's), a willet, avocets and bn stilts.
Loloff: pretty much the same as 59 in lower numbers.
Latham: we managed a Virginia rail and a FOS marsh wren. Not much going in the way of shorebirds.
Beebe Draw: Blackbirdolooza. There were hundreds of yellow-heads scattered around the grassy pasture surrounding the pond. More than I have ever seen outside a marsh, and maybe more than anywere. It made the pasture look like it had been overrun with dandelions. Also in the area were four burrowing owls. There was also a group of ten willets. Question: why does eBird insist on clasifying willet as a "rarity" this time of year on the eastern plains when they can be found at virtually every mudflat? We had them at 59 and Beebe today.
All in all, it was an intriguing outing. We managed 80 species with only one more-or-less neotrop in the orange-crowns. Other than a few Say's phoebes, we had no flycatchers, no other warblers, no vireos, no orioles.
Good birding,
Norm
Norm Lewis
Lakewood, CO
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