Sunday, 7 December 2014

[cobirds] Allenspark and Hygiene (Boulder Co) 12/7

Hi Everyone—

 

I took a drive up to Allenspark today 12/7 to look for rosy-finches. It turned out to be an amazing experience. Usually, they’re so skittish. With not much wind and lots of sunflower seeds, a flock of 80 birds stayed around the feeders at the Fawn Brook Inn for the entire hour and a half I was there. Mostly Gray-crowned (some with full gray cheeks, some with gray just to the eye line), with one bright Brown-capped, one bright Black, and three young, dullish Blacks.  None wore bands. They were eating sunflower seeds, sure, but they were also eating gravel in the road, sometimes landing just a few yards from me. One even made a brief landing on my shoulder. I could hear its toenails on my parka. There were two feisty Red Squirrels in the area, chasing each other around. In the course of the chase, one of them stood on my left shoe and growled at me. I don’t know what that was about. I also stopped at the pond (is it a resaca now?) on the north side of Hygiene Road, a mile west of the town of Hygiene (it would be in the 6500 block if there were signs). The young Trumpeter Swan towered over the gadwall and wigeons there.

 

Mark Miller

Longmont, CO

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