Hello, Birders.
This past weekend, Saturday-Sunday, August 23-24, I made my first-ever visit to San Miguel County, for birding trips with The Nature Conservancy in Colorado.
We got under way Saturday morning a bit south of Telluride at high-elevation Alta Lakes, where it was breezy, humid, cloudy, and cold. Our first detection was an unseen but vocal Pine Grosbeak. Other nice birds up there were a Fox Sparrow in an impenetrable thicket, a troupe of Gray Jays, several pairs of Green-winged Teal, a drumming Red-naped Sapsucker, and a Golden Eagle sailing in front of an imposingly steep cliff face.
Late Saturday morning, we teamed up with Between the Covers, Telluride's independent bookstore, for a ramble in the sun and drizzle up Bear Creek Trail, immediately south of Telluride. The highlight was a flock of at least 4 Townsend's Warblers. We also found an Evening Grosbeak, Olive-sided and Cordilleran flycatchers, 6 Golden-crowned Kinglets and 5 Brown Creepers, and a strangely bright Warbling Vireo.
For a mid-afternoon jaunt on Saturday, we visited a U.S. Forest Service tract at Deep Creek, near Telluride's airport. Right away, an adult Peregrine Falcon, probably a male, hurtled through the gray sky like an anchor flung from a ship; next the bird went into an amazing vertical dive and disappeared behind a ridge. Not a bad start. Then it started to rain, but the birding was decent. A large mixed-species flock on an open hillside included at least 90 Western Bluebirds, 300+ Pine Siskins, and divers sparrows, among them 6 Green-tailed Towhees; even a Bushtit and a Dusky Flycatcher joined in the fray. In a little aspen grove, we found a flock with 2 Western Tanagers, a Cassin's Finch, and Orange-crowned and MacGillivray's warblers.
On Sunday morning, we visited open country in the sun-kissed valley floor just east of Telluride, where an interesting sighting was a female Blue-winged Teal paired with a female Cinnamon Teal. Other birds: a Rock Wren bobbed up and down on a fencepost and said ch'PEEeee; Lincoln's Sparrows and Wilson's and Yellow warblers called from the thickets along the San Miguel River; and we got flybys from Cedar Waxwing, Lesser Goldfinch, and Swainson's Hawk.
Early Sunday afternoon, three of us trekked out to Miramonte Reservoir, cool and cloudy. The rez is well west of Telluride, but still nowhere near out to the Utah border; San Miguel is a long county! Diverse highlights included a Purple Martin, 10 White-faced Ibises, 11 American Avocets, 2 Loggerhead Shrikes, at least 30 Western Bluebirds, a flotilla of 29 Common Mergansers, an impressive 10 American Kestrels, and 6 ridiculously cooperative Type 2 Red Crossbills in a conveniently dead--but still-pinecone-laden--ponderosa pine. We also found American Wigeon, Northern Pintail, Ruddy Dark, Pied-billed and Eared grebes, Baird's Sandpiper, Pygmy Nuthatch, Bewick's Wren, and Brewer's and Savannah sparrows.
And early this Monday morning, I indulged in a bit of disgraceful list-building, prowling the mean streets of Telluride in an effort to boost my San Miguel County list to an even 100. A juvenile American Dipper along the river did the trick.
Thanks to The Nature Conservancy in Colorado for the splendid weekend; thanks also to Between the Covers and to LightHawk (a cool bookstore and a great nonprofit, respectively; google them) for support; and to our wonderful human hosts, among them Mandy Timbers, Peter Mueller, John Pryor, Thalia Pryor, Charles Price, Bobbi Smith, and Daiva Chisonis.
Oh, and check this out. I saw nary a single species of pigeon or dove whilst in San Miguel County. (They'll all in Montrose.)
Ted Floyd
Lafayette, Boulder County, Colorado
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