[cobirds] CFO Trip to NE Colorado, Day 2

Today marked the continuation of the CFO-sponsored trip to NE Colorado.  By having a two-day trip with an overnight stay in Sterling, the CFO is able to spend more time further east than single day trips heading out from the front range are able to do.  On the Sunday portion of our outing, we headed out to Crook and Tamarack SWA first before spending some serious time at Jumbo and Red Lion SWA.

 

Our first stop of the day was to visit an eBird hotspot at the overly specific spot of Logan County Road 73.7!  Our best spot seemed to be a group of Wild Turkey just outside of the unnamed hamlet at 75 and 58 until John Vanderpoel picked out a single Upland Sandpiper in the field north of LCR 58  heading east toward US 138.  This has always been the most reliable spot for finding Uppies, as far as I am concerned.

 

We continued on to the west section of Tamarack (parking area 1 west of County Road 55).  Here I started hearing Bell’s Vireo before I even got out of my car.  My count was 8 different singing and territorial males asking and answering their buzzy questions. 

 

Then we headed east into the main section of Tamarack.  At stop 5 we had Red-bellied Woodpeckers and several of our 30+ Red-headed Woodpeckers for the day.  When we got to Logan County Road 93 we headed south under I-76 into the sandhill-grassland and ag areas along that road.  We had several Grasshopper Sparrows and a few Say’s Phoebes but none of the things we like to get along that road (e.g. Greater Prairie Chicken).  Perhaps it was just too hot.

 

It turned out that going north along LR 93 was impossible—it is still closed crossing the S. Platte.  In order to get to Jumbo, we had to go east on I-76 to the Sedgwick exit and proceed back to the west.  Jumbo is developing A+ shorebird habitat, especially between the central point on the south shore and the first camping area west of the Sedgwick-Logan county line.  Here we had large numbers of Least and Baird’s Sandpipers and a large handful of Pectorals, too.  But even better were the single, striking Black-bellied Plover still mainly in breeding plumage and three Sanderlings.  Heading back toward Red Lion we were rewarded with several previously un-tallied duck species to pump up our day and trip list.  All together the trip list ended at 128 (+/- a few) for our efforts.  This will probably equal or surpass the all-time record for this field trip that I’ve been leading since 2000.

 

Bill Kaempfer

Boulder