I dove in head-first for the end of the Christmas Bird Count season with three counts over the last weekend of the season in Flagler, Crook and at Barr Lake on Friday, Saturday and Sunday of this past weekend.
On Friday I went out to Flagler, only 90 minutes east of the Denver area on I-70 for the 4th count out there. Previously Flagler has registered a national high for Lapland Longspur and a 2nd place in Horned Lark, but this was a tough year. First it was just plain frozen out there resulting in zero birds associated with water; not only no ducks or geese, but no heron, kingfisher, snipe, marsh wren…you get the story. If you are a bird that needs open water of any type, there was no point staying around the Flagler area. Second, I just couldn’t wrangle many birders out there—my thanks to Doug Kibbe, Bill Killam and Gwen Moore for signing on, but two parties covering a whole count circle leaves a lot of territory on the table. Still we managed to find 33 species (take out all of the water-associated birds on other plains counts, and you would be at the same level). This remains a good place to find longspurs—we had dozens of Laplands and one Chestnut-collared on the count.
Gwen Moore and I continued on up to Sterling to enjoy the Crook CBC on Saturday. This is a spectacular count circle encompassing Jumbo Reservoir plus Red Lion, Tamarack Ranch and Duck Creek SWAs. The block I work for Steve Larson on this count is everything east of Logan County Road 93, the Red Lion exit road from I-76. Again it is a lot of territory, and unfortunately, unlike Flagler some really nasty weather loomed ahead. On the other hand, like Flagler there was a lot of frozen water out there.
A first stop at the WCR 93 bridge over the Platte failed to get any Eastern Screech Owls to respond, but there were pairs of Great Horned Owls calling in three different directions. From this point we back-tracked to I-76 where right at the entrance ramp it is possible to view one of the recharge ponds that attract ducks no matter how cold. Water is pumped from the Platte in Tamarack Ranch SWA to these ponds about 1 or 2 miles from the river to slowly enter the ground water system and return to the river. This creates a series of water features that, due to the pumped-in water, remain open even when the temperature falls below 0F, as had been the case for several days. The pond attracted more than a thousand Snow Geese with a few Ross’s filling in, many white-cheeked geese, several thousand Mallards plus a handful Northern Pintail and Common Goldeneyes.
All of Jumbo Reservoir was frozen solid, but a few seeps below the various Jumbo dams had open water and Marsh Wrens. We managed to find a Harris’s Sparrow along Sedgwick County Road 3 south of US 138 plus Red-bellied Woodpeckers, as expected at the south end of both SCR 1 and 3. Perhaps the most exciting birding was along the hedgerow lining SCR 1 (County Line Road) just south of Jumbo Reservoir. We were able to find at least 5 Long-eared Owls and a Short-eared Owl in this sometimes good and other times not so good roost.
At 11:00 the weather started turning bad, and the whole group—8 birders in 3 groups—headed for home shortly after noon.
Sunday, I made the much shorter 35 minute trip out to Brighton for my block on the Barr Lake CBC. This is a block that I first worked with Colorado birding legend, Bob Jickling, in the early 1980s, and boy has it changed physically since then! Not only are there housing developments where there didn’t use to be, there are industrial areas, lakes, streams…just about everything has changed in that period of time except for the birding potential.
The weather conditions still weren’t much different than in Flagler and Crook—it was and had been very cold. I started the day with -10F on my car thermometer. Shortly thereafter, joined by Pam Piombino and David Dowell we began to cut through the dense fog along the Platte. Unlike the previous two days, the cold in Brighton managed to bring all the birds into the effluent warmed river. We had quite a collection of ducks—13 species in total—on the river, plus lots of Killdeer, Wilson’s Snipe and American Pipits. But best was at the Brighton sewage treatment plant where warm water and insect life held 3 Yellow-rumped Warblers and the first ever Say’s Phoebe for the Barr Lake count.
The other really good stop for the block was in the Brighton Cemetery. We all commented that this spot had been a dud in the past even though it rated as both an eBird Hotspot and a CFO County Birding site. On Sunday it lived up to its reputation and we logged about a dozen Red-breasted Nuthatches, 5 Brown Creepers and 3 Mountain Chickadees. This helped us out to a block total of 60 species for the day.
And so, another CBC season came to an end. I made it out to 7 different counts this year. This was down 3 over the past couple of years because I was out of town for a week and because the Sunday start to the count period jammed things up a bit. My overall impression, however, was that there were few counters out this season. I hope that is just an aberration, and all of you make it out for multiple CBCs next year.
Bill Kaempfer
President CFO
Boulder
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