[cobirds] Wandering Weld Yesterday

Greetings All

Yesterday, Nick Moore and I wandered about much of western/central Weld County.

The weather, was suboptimal but not too intrusive

The Pawnee had, gasp!, very very little snow on the ground, so larks and such were not pushed to roadsides. We did still have a couple nice (20-50 birds) sized flocks of Lapland Longs, but mostly as flybys/flyovers

Because of the exceptionally cold dawn temps, we put off trying to bird water spots until about 10 am; before then, there was too much fog rising from the unfrozen water into the near-zero degree air.

Almost all water had thawed before the recent cold snap, so only smaller ponds (e.g., Stewarts' Pond) were frozen. 

The S Weld Landfill remains gull-less for reasons unclear, as there were gulls at Black Hollow Res (but these could not be well seen due to snow, and the place is already rapidly freezing.) Drake Lake is mostly frozen, but had a nice little group of gulls and geese

Windsor Res was ice-free and strangely bird-free

Windsor Lake had a couple THAYER's GULL and the LONG-TAILED DUCK remained at the east end, with a goodly group of Common Goldeneye

Neff Lake was nearly frozen and utterly bird less

Seeley Res had a nice variety of birds, including a female BUFFLEHEAD x COMMON GOLDENEYE

Angel Lake was open and stuffed full of Mallards and Cackling/Canada Geese as were the surrounding fields.

Woods Lake had fabulous numbers of gulls and geese but little of interest. 1000+ RB Gulls and not a single Herring or other gull. Among the 3000+ geese, only 2 Snow Geese added interest and not a single hybrid (in the past, this many geese at Woods would've had a dozen or more white geese and several hybrids. There were two AM WHITE PELICANS on the south shore. 

The Lower Latham are was mostly frozen, excepting L Latham Res itself, which had surprisingly few birds. The little stream that enters the s. side of L Latham Res did have an AMERICAN PIPIT. Given that I had one recently along the St Vrain in Longmont, I wonder if pipits are actually starting to migrate, albeit in small numbers

Lastly, where the S Platte crosses CO-66 just outside of Platteville, there was a GREATER YELLOWLEGS.

Good Birding

Steve Mlodinow

Longmont CO

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