Hello, Birders.
With Chris Pague and Mike Figgs, I spent the past three days, Friday-Sunday, May 23-25 at the Lazy UO Ranch, Las Animas County, a PRIVATE holding of The Nature Conservancy in Colorado.
On the drive down on Friday morning, Chris and I saw a beautiful SCISSOR-TAILED FLYCATCHER just south of milepost 61 along the west side of Highway 71, Lincoln County. And on the way back up this Sunday afternoon, we saw a lethargic YELLOW-THROATED VIREO where Horse Creek crosses Lincoln County road M off Highway 71 near milepost 60. So a nice mile of highway there.
But I said we were at the Lazy UO Ranch, so more about that now.
The ranch is an amazing place, with nearly five miles of Carrizo Creek meandering through the property. At one point on Saturday morning, we heard and audio-recorded a WHITE-EYED VIREO, followed quickly by a RED-EYED VIREO, and then a gorgeous INDIGO BUNTING and a loudly declaiming SUMMER TANAGER. So it’s a neat place for quote-unquote rare birds. But we were mainly there to document use of the ranch by canyon country birds. Here are some of the totals for our three days there:
8 Mississippi Kites, 3 Greater Roadrunners, 2 Scaled Quails, 2 Lewis’s Woodpeckers, 13 Ladder-backed Woodpeckers, 3 Gray Flycatchers, 11 Eastern Phoebes, 20 Cassin’s Kingbirds, 20 Ash-throated Flycatchers, 2 Juniper Titmouses, 10 Bushtits, 22 Bewick’s Wrens, 18 Canyon Wrens, 30 Rock Wrens, 3 Curve-billed Thrashers, 17 Canyon Towhees, 15 Rufous-crowned Sparrows, 37 Blue Grosbeaks, and 9 Orchard Orioles.
(The computer I’m using tried to auto-correct my 10 Bushtits to 10 Buddhists, LOL.)
Here’s a bit more detail:
* It was cool to see 10 drake Wood Ducks, but check this out. We saw at least 7 (!) ducks with Mexican Duck genetic material. One was a female that had good but not great diazi characters; she was accompanied by 5 young. And one was a pure-as-far-as-I-could-tell drake hanging out with an adult male Mallard. An interracial gay couple; fine with me.
* Summer Tanagers. We had at least three, at widely spaced locations along Carrizo Creek. Two said picky-ticky-tuck, and another was singing its head off. I’m guessing the Summer Tanagers are nesting here, à la Beatty Canyon Ranch a bit to the west.
* Wonderful to see all the kites; as with the Summer Tanagers, reminds me of the situation at Beatty Canyon Ranch. Also a Prairie Falcon attending an eyrie, and a Golden Eagle.
* Migrants. The White-eyed and Red-eyed vireos were cool, but perhaps the most-lost soul was a Red-breasted Nuthatch chasing a Western Wood-Pewee. Wood-pewees--all seemingly Westerns--were probably the most-numerous migrants. We also found singleton Orange-crowned, MacGillivray’s, and Wilson’s Warblers, a few Lincoln’s and dark-lored White-crowned Sparrows, and a couple Western Tanagers. Basically, common western migrants in low numbers.
* Prairie dog town. Here were saw 5 Burrowing Owls, saw and heard 3 Cassin’s Sparrows, and heard an improbable Wild Turkey.
* Phoebes. They sure are dense in there. Along with the Easterns, we tallied 27 Say’s and a few spuhs. Didn’t see any for-sure Blacks, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they occur somewhere along Carrizo Creek.
* Ravens. They’re hard. Seems like most were Commons, but we had one or a handful of apparent Chihuahuans--including an audio-recorded bird.
* Warbling-vireos. We heard two and saw three. Both of the heard birds were audio-recorded, and both sang the songs of the Western Warbling Vireo; the seen-only bird matched the plumage of the Western Warbling-Vireo. It's a bit of an irony--although it makes sense, landscape-wise--that all the Western Warbling-Vireos I’ve heard and audio-recorded this year in Colorado have occurred east of all the Eastern Warbling-Vireos I’ve heard and audio-recorded this year in Colorado.
* The ones that got away. I saw an “interesting,” short-billed, somewhat pale thrasher; no witnesses, no camera or audio, no dice. Also a meadowlark-like song emanating from a vast stand of juniper; some sweet and slurred notes off in the distance in a stand of ponderosa and piñon pine on a north-facing slope; and an uncooperative lower-case gray vireo in a dense juniper. An Archilochus hummingbird was perforce a spuh. It’s okay--it’s a good thing--to let a few get away. Great excuse to come back.
Because I was with Chris and Mike, we studied far more than just birds. I’m probably getting some of the names wrong, but we saw: Rocky Mountain bighorn, gray fox, beaver, muskrat, rock squirrel, Colorado chipmunk, grasshopper mouse, deer mouse, brush mouse, Mexican wood-rat, black-tailed jackrabbit, desert cottontail, coyote, mule deer, elk, pronghorn, black-tailed prairie bog, Botta’s pocket gopher, Plains pocket gopher, and (offsite) a kit fox family being harassed by a Common Raven; collared lizard, prairie fence lizard, ring-necked snake, coachwhip (offsite), bullfrog, Plains leopard frog, Bufo sp., and an unidentified turtle; largemouth bass and sunfish sp.; scorpions and wolf spiders; insects galore, including tarantula hawks and an impressive giant lady beetle; a triple witching of common checkered-skipper, variable checkerspot, and checkered white; a dinosaur track; a meteor; and a ponderosa pine that Chris’s corer indicated is 186 years old.
A comment about the Rocky Mountain bighorns. Although I am appropriately disdainful of non-volant mammals, especially large game, I have to confess that the highlight of the visit was the sheep. I’ve seen bighorns before, licking salt off Trail Ridge Drive or posing dumbly for photos, but this herd of at least a dozen astonished me. We came upon them as we were preparing to descend a slot canyon, and the sheep pranced blithely and blazingly fast right up a sheer cliff quite nearby. On the way up, one of the three lambs pirouetted practically in mid-air, bleated at me, and then resumed its impossible vertical trajectory.
Finally, I was shown settings that, according to Chris and Mike, are possessed of significant “scenic value” and “scenic beauty.” I am still trying to wrap my mind around the idea. Well, I was plenty impressed by all the tanagers and vireos, dinosaurs and giant lady beetles, bighorn sheep and ring-necked snakes. Thanks, to Chris and Mike for a wonderful visit!--and to The Nature Conservancy in Colorado for its amazing work statewide.
Ted Floyd
Lafayette, Boulder County, Colorado
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