Hello, Birders.
Hannah and Andrew and I are back from the 12th annual High Plains Snow Goose Festival, held this past Thursday-Sunday, February 20-23, 2014. The highlight was a very surprising, bright red, adult male, softly warbling, ridiculously cooperative Pine Grosbeak feeding in a cottonwood at the far eastern end of "The Black Hole," below the dam at Two Buttes Reservoir, Baca County, on a perfectly still and sunny Saturday afternoon, February 22nd. Definitely one for the "Go Figure" category.
The rest of the story:
We started counting birds in Kit Carson, Cheyenne County, late Thursday afternoon, February 20th. Our tally was one (1) Eurasian Collared-Dove. If it weren't for collared-doves, I don't think there'd be any birds at all in Kit Carson. Can anybody think of a more birdless town in Colorado?
On approach to Eads, Kiowa County, a bit after sundown, we saw about 500 Snow Geese flying above US-287.
The next morning, Friday, February 21st, Hannah and Andrew and I visited Thurston Reservoir, northern Prowers County, where found Snow Goose Festival impresario Linda Groat, keynote speaker Greg Miller, and some birds, among them ~200 Snow Geese, 3 Cinnamon Teal, 607 Northern Pintails, 1 Golden Eagle, 1 dark-morph Rough-legged Hawk, and ~500 Sandhill Cranes. You can hear one of the Sandhill Cranes here: http://xeno-canto.org/167848.
Friday afternoon, we went to John Martin Reservoir, Bent County, with Greg Miller and seven other Snow Goosers. Hasty campground was a bit slow, although Greg found us a Yellow-rumped Warbler or two, and Jill White Smith tracked down some Marsh Wrens. Above the dam, it was avian mayhem at 4:15 p.m., as 7,000 Snow Geese and a few dozen Ross's Geese put up. Also 35 Bald Eagles, 1 Golden Eagle, and a trio of male Mountain Bluebirds.
Saturday morning, February 22nd, we birded with a dozen other Snow Goosers along Willow Creek, right below Lamar Community College, Prowers County. We found a beautiful adult male Red-bellied Woodpecker, an Eastern White-breasted Nuthatch ("Carolina" Nuthatch) saying yarnk yarnk, and at least three dueling male Northern Cardinals. Here is a photo of one of the cardinals: http://tinyurl.com/Jill-White-Smith-redbird. Here's audio of the same bird: http://xeno-canto.org/167881. Here's audio of the Red-bellied Woodpecker: http://xeno-canto.org/167880. And here's audio of the nuthatch: http://xeno-canto.org/167879.
Saturday afternoon, 32 of us birded Two Buttes, Baca County. The first vertebrate we saw was a porcupine, one of six we would see during our ramble. The next vertebrate was a Mountain Bluebird, the first of at least 45 we saw that afternoon. Next up: a flock of incredibly high Sandhill Cranes, about 175 of them, drifting northeast toward the Platte River in Nebraska. (Thanks to Domonique Jones for pointing these out; we might not otherwise have detected them.) Other sightings included 2 Golden Eagles, 1 Ferruginous Hawk, more Sandhill Cranes, a Great Horned Owl, a Yellow-shafted Flicker, a Chihuahuan Raven, and the aforementioned Pine Grosbeak. Here's a photo of the grosbeak: http://tinyurl.com/Debbie-Barnes-Shankster-PiGr.
Sunday morning, February 23, 10 of us trekked west to Higbee Cemetery & environs, Otero County. It was cold and cloudy at the outset, but the sun came out eventually. At the second homestead beyond the cemetery, we beheld a grotesque and fascinating assemblage of hundreds of corvids and columbids. Mixed in with all the Rock Pigeons and Eurasian Collared-Doves was a White-winged Dove. The 100+ ravens were mainly Commons, it seemed to me; also crows, a Blue Jay, and a Woodhouse's Scrub-Jay screeching its head off. Better than Hitchcock. Elsewhere in the canyon, we saw three widely scattered Ladder-backed Woodpeckers, three Canyon Towhees, a flyover Pine Siskin, and an adult male Cooper's Hawk that just soared for the longest time. Townsend's Solitaires were everywhere, and we found another flock of Mountain Bluebirds. Listen to one of the ravens (and an interesting non-raven) here: http://xeno-canto.org/168035. And here's a recording of one of the Ladder-backed Woodpeckers: http://xeno-canto.org/168039.
After lunch on Sunday, six of us went up to Lake Henry, Crowley County, where we found an ungodly number of Common Goldeneyes, a Loggerhead Shrike, more Mountain Bluebirds, and a maybe-an-Eastern Bluebird (moving car, dirt road, kids throwing things in the back seat...). After Lake Henry, we proceeded to Box Springs Pond, northern Crowley County. Greg Miller and I agreed that the 53 Redheads there seemed like 2-3% of the number of Redheads we saw at Lake Henry; and that the number of Lake Henry Redheads was about half the number of the goldeneyes there. Do the math.
The drive north through Lincoln County, on state route 71, yielded several nice light-morph Rough-legged Hawks, a maybe-a-Merlin flying straight away, and a lone Eurasian Collared-Dove at Karval Crossing.
On I-70 in Elbert County we saw a buzzy thing fly past. It could have been a woodcock. It could have been a dove. It could have been a diving-petrel.
And we wrapped up our weekend with a spooky Great Horned Owl perched on a pole right along I-70 near Strasburg, Arapahoe County.
Here's a thought. This was Hannah Floyd's 7th consecutive High Plains Snow Goose Festival. She's grown up with the festival! Here are some of her highlights from years past:
February 24, 2008. Trumpeter Swan, John Martin Reservoir, Bent County.
February 21, 2009. Vesper Sparrow, Mike Higbee State Wildlife Area, Prowers County.
February 27, 2010. Carolina Wren, Lamar Community College, Prowers County.
February 27. 2011. Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Higbee Cemetery, Otero County.
February 25, 2012. McCown's Longspur, Granada, Prowers County.
February 24, 2013. Hoary Redpoll, Linda Groat's house, Bent County.
February 22, 2014. Pine Grosbeak, Two Buttes, Baca County.
Always a good time down there in Lamar in late February!
Ted Floyd
Lafayette, Boulder County, Colorado
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