[cobirds] Yuma county --- Golden-crowned Sparrow, 10/25/14

COBirders,

Today, Lisa Edwards and I had planned to do a fair bit of birding in multiple eastern Colorado areas but ended up only making it to the Bonny and Hale areas of Yuma county.  We started at Foster's Grove where the highlights were a GRAY CATBIRD, three WHITE-THROATED SPARROWs and a flyover CASSIN'S FINCH.

Next stop was Wagon Wheel campground which had birds but mostly expected things, not totally unexpected yet nice was a GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLET and a probable hybrid Eastern X Spotted Towhee.

Onto "Pipit Hill" where we recorded all of SEVEN individual birds which included two HORNED LARKs, one CHESTNUT-COLLARED LONGSPUR and at least four SPRAGUE'S PIPITs.  To get to Pipit Hill take the road just on the north side of the Republican river off of LL.5 and head west.  The road eventually bends back to the south.  You do not want to go to the south but you can park near where it turns to the south and then walk up hill to the north.  There is a windmill in this area.  Really anywhere on that hillside is reasonable.

Back down the road to the Hale area near the intersection of CR4 and LL.5 we had a LINCOLN'S SPARROW and a "RED" FOX SPARROW (mixed in with Junco's) for our highlights.

Then off to Hale Ponds where shortly after getting out of the car we found a juvenile GOLDEN-CROWNED SPARROW (which completed the Zonotrichia slam for us, kind of) that was associating with a small flock of WHITE-CROWNED SPARROWs.  They disappeared on us quickly so we decided to wander off into Kansas to poke around bit and give them time to maybe return.  When we returned we worked the area for quite a while going through a lot of White-crowns but never re-found the Golden-crowned.  I suspect it is still there but there is a lot of area to cover and we finally decided to give up.  Ah, a mentioned that we kind of completed the Zonotrichia slam above.  We did but across state lines.  Our only HARRIS'S SPARROW of the day was in Kansas and the Golden-crowned was only about 300 yards from being in Kansas.

Beautiful weather out there and great company.  Ah, and a word of caution if you decide to head out there, we saw roughly 20 cars that were out there for hunting, so you might consider wearing your blaze orange if you have any.

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Mark Peterson
Colorado Springs