[cobirds] Fremont county --- Black-and-white Warbler

COBirders,

I had some family stuff to do in Canon City today and after I had about two hours for a little birding.  I decided to hit a few private locations that are usually covered on the Penrose CBC and there were a couple of goodies.  The best bird of the day was a female BLACK-AND-WHITE WARBLER, just to help kick the total warbler species count up by one for the month of November.  Other nice birds today were two BLACK PHOEBEs, one at a private location and the other at Florence River Park (http://cobirds.org/BySite.aspx?SiteID=804&CountyID=23).

I am not sure if these have been reported or seen yet this fall but the presumed same group of GREATER WHITE-FRONTED GEESE have returned to the Canon City area.  I saw at least seven of them on "Valco ponds."  This is no longer Valco property but these are the ponds just north of the Arkansas river on the east side of MacKenzie Avenue.  This is private property, I actually saw these birds from the bridge over the Arkansas river as they were in the far back part of the pond.  Just a little side note, there has been a group of Greater White-fronted Geese detected in this area every year since at least 1991.

I thought I would add this interesting (at least to me) behavior I observed this evening with a flock of 1500-2000 gulls.  I decided to stop by Big Johnson reservoir, El Paso county, on my home to see if there were many gulls.  As I approached I saw the above flock of gulls flying south away from the reservoir out of sight.  It was approximately 4:50PM so the sun was down but still light in the sky.  I decided to stop and look at the water with what little light was left.  About five minutes later the flock had returned and circled around the lake and then headed south again until they were out of sight.  About five minutes later, they reappeared.  This time they seemed to be flying with a purpose and flew very fast and fairly low headed straight for the reservoir.  They still did not land though, instead they gained in elevation and split into two groups and just circled around and started to head south yet again but did not go far.  It was finally getting too dark to really follow them so I decided to give up watching.  When I left they were still fairly high above the reservoir circling.  Anyway, I wish I would have been there to see what initially got them flying, if anything.

 

-----

Mark Peterson
Colorado Springs