Thursday, 3 July 2014

Re: [cobirds] Barr Lake, Adams County, July 2

Ted, you were asking what was up with the cackling geese hanging out here for the summer.

I have up to 800 geese on the townhouse property where I live near Littleton in the winter time, many of them being the lesser forms.  By migration time, March or so, all of those geese leave with just the 50
Resident Giesting.

For the first time in the 11 years that  I've been here, a pair of lesser Canada geese and a greater white fronted goose stayed here. I was surprised by that. They didn't have any offspring, but did seem to be accepted by the other geese.

Deb Carstensen, Littleton, Arapahoe County, Colorado.
Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 3, 2014, at 6:05 AM, Ted Floyd <tedfloyd57@hotmail.com> wrote:

Hello, Birders.

I had an errand yesterday, Wednesday, July 2, at Barr Lake, Adams County. Convenient place for a birder to have an errand, eh?

The very first bird I saw was a Cackling Goose. Photo here: http://tinyurl.com/Cackling-Barr-Lake Cathy Sheeter tells me there have a few here this summer. To which I say: What's up with that?

The only nuthatch I saw and heard was a good match for Rocky Mountain Nuthatch. And what, pray tell, is a Rocky Mountain Nuthatch? Well, Colorado's own peripatetic Steve Mlodinow has a handy primer in this month's Birding magazine, published by the American Birding Association, on how to separate the Carolina, Rocky Mountain, and Slender-billed nuthatches, two taxa of which occur regularly in Colorado. Here is a link to a PDF download of Steve's article:


All four of the vireos I saw and heard were good phenotypic matches for Eastern Warbling-Vireo. Here's audio of a Rocky Mountain Nuthatch with a descant from an Eastern Warbling-Vireo:


Barr Lake is a great venue for appreciating the East-meets-West aspect of Colorado birding.


Ted Floyd

Lafayette, Boulder County, Colorado


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