John Vanderpoel, Andy Cowell and I headed to Morgan County this morning for the Weldona/Ft. Morgan Christmas Bird Count. The count had been scheduled for Tuesday, but if I’m going to cancel CU’s final exams for the day you can be sure I’m going to ask count compiler Bruce Bosley to postpone the CBC!
We headed out for a leisurely start in our block at about 8:45 (passing some nasty looking goings on along I-76) and were welcomed to a beautiful sunny (if cold) and mostly calm day. Our block starts at Long Bridge—the CO 144 bridge over the South Platte between Ft. Morgan and Weldona. Right after getting out of the car we heard an Eastern Screech Owl calling like crazy along the river. Eastern Bluebirds were in the swampy bottom lands west of the road and the general sparrow flock included a Lincoln’s Sparrow. Up the hill side in a forested seep Andy found a (red) Fox Sparrow. Birds were feeding actively after what was probably an unpleasant day for them on Tuesday.
Moving on into the Weldona area we had a Brown-headed Cowbird in a feedlot blackbird flock, a Pine Siskin in a roadside sparrow/finch flock and a Merlin. There were also about 2 dozen Wild Turkeys in the corn fields around town. We next visited a hunting lodge along the Platte that Bruce gets us into after the hunters have left. It was really active, but mainly with more of the same except for a few addition duck species among the several hundred Mallards. We also had a Mourning Dove and Cooper’s Hawk there.
Finally on our way home we stopped at Jackson Lake State Park since it is only about 10 minutes from Weldona. There we had a Long-eared Owl and a Yellow-rumped Warbler.
Bill Kaempfer
Boulder
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