[cobirds] Sterling, CO CBC

The 13^th consecutive Sterling CBC was held on Tuesday, 12/16.  Weather was decidedly different than along the front range—up to a foot of snow fell over Sunday night/Monday and the temperature on Tuesday morning was as low as 1 degree (F).  For a number of reasons, participation was low this year with only 6 on the count, one of whom had to bow out in mid-morning.  But the rest of us kept on counting on an extremely birdy day. 

 

I was afraid that the cold weather would have frozen out North Sterling Reservoir, but approaching it in the morning, we could see massive fog banks rolling off of it.  Of course that made the counting slow, but things cleared up enough to reveal that about 25% of the water was open (all on the far shore, of course) with a nice selection of unusual species—one each of Western Grebe, Pied-billed Grebe, American White Pelican (amazingly the 4^th time in 13 years for that species) plus 4 Hooded Mergansers (new to the count) and 6 Double-crested Cormorants.  Even nicer was a pair of Long-tailed Ducks and six Greater White-fronted Geese. 

 

Along the South Platte River and areas to the east of it there was a Greater Prairie Chicken, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Harris’s Sparrow and Lapland Longspurs.  That brought us to a total for count day of 61 (with 7 more count week species).  Including count week species, that is the 5^th highest total.

 

Bill Kaempfer

Boulder