[cobirds] Get Your Kicks on Route 36

Okay, so I’m off by 30.

 

Gwen Moore, John Vanderpoel and I headed out US 36 for some eastern plains birding today and had a terrific time.

 

We started at Last Chance for Sunrise (sounds like a movie title, eh?), where things were very birdy if not overly rare.  Right at sun-up dozens of Chipping Sparrows wiped away the duck week to take a drink from the Last Chance water hole.  All told we had 6 sparrow species at LC including lots of Lincoln’s and White-crowned, a few Clay-colored, a Song and a White-throated.  We could only get on four warbler species, all highly normal, but John though he might have had a Chestnut-sided and I saw some sort of tanager.  A Peregrine Falcon was terrifying Barn Swallows for grins.

 

We kept going east on US 36 and were in for a big surprise.  After we passed a disappointing, totally dry Anton Playa (about 2 miles west of Anton) we ended up entered the land of a thousand playas!  Going east from Anton for about 12 miles, virtually every low spot on the plains was filled with water, and usually birds, too.  IF YOU SEEK BIRDING PLANS FOR TOMORROW, I STRONGLY ENCOURAGE YOU TO THINK ABOUT GOING OUT TO ANTON (20 miles past Last Chance) AND CONTINUING EAST ON CR 12 FOR ANOTHER 10 MILES OR SO.  There are literally 100 playas in the area, many right by the road, some right over the road!  We spent over 2 hours covering about 3 miles.

 

There were lots of shorebirds and lots of variety to be found, the best of which included American Golden-Plover, Black-bellied Plover, Willet, both yellowlegs, Long-billed Dowitcher, Least and Baird’s Sandpiper.  (The most productive spot was at WCR 12 X JJ.)  The shore lines were also full of American Pipits, Savannah Sparrows and Vesper Sparrows, plus a couple of Chestnut-collard Longspurs.  Oh, should I also mention that at the afore mentioned spot we flushed a double-digit covey (?) of Greater Prairie Chickens.

 

Well, enough of that stuff on to Pipit Hill.  We kept going east on US 36 (for mountain invasion fans—a Red-breasted Nuthatch in Cope).  Driving past the cottonwood sapling farm formerly known as Bonny Reservoir is painful to talk about.  But not so Pipit Hill.  Go east past the old Bonny Dam to Hale and continue north.  Immediately after you cross the “river” take the track to the NW, continuing on the fainter track to the right when the first is about to turn into someone’s driveway.  At the top of the hill, just before a windmill operated water hole, we had 3 Sprague’s Pipits, and more than that, we got to watch them on the ground and even got photos.

 

Beyond that we poked around Hale Corners to no avail, found a pair of Osprey at Hale Ponds (where there were dozens of horses and spaniels) and then dipped into Kansas to look for the lost Bonny Water (but I can’t talk about that here).

 

All told we had over 70 species for the day.

 

Bill Kaempfer

Boulder