[cobirds] Cherry Creek SP and Aurora Res. Birding on 12/3

At the comfortable hour of 8:45 this morning, I ventured out with John Vanderpoel in our effort to try to pad our year lists in Arapahoe County.  (By the way, John and I joined up only after he had visited Dodd Res. in Boulder County and found it frozen over and swanless.) 

 

We started at Cherry Creek SP, on the east side in hopes of Rusty Blackbird.  At the east side boat dock, we figured we were in the right place when we saw Tom and Debbie Behnfield further down shore with some others.  We weren’t more than 10 steps along the way when I started hearing a screechy-squeeky call note that certainly was not a Magpie.  Sure enough, we soon picked out a single male Rusty Blackbird near the top of one of the cottonwood saplings along the shore.  Tom and Debbie, when they headed out way, reported that all five of the previously reported blackbirds had been along the shore earlier.  Otherwise at Cherry Creek, there were still many American White Pelicans present (last year I had 2 AWPE in Colorado in December on CBC’s, so look for them where there is open water this year, too).

 

John and I then went to the relatively nearby Aurora Reservoir and paid the relatively high $10 entrance fee to start birding at this massively open ornithological community (or MOOC as we say in the Ed Business).  Since it was still morning we walked down the east side from the dam parking area.  Almost all of the white-cheeked geese present were Cackling (at a ratio of at least 30-1 vis-à-vis Canada), however there were 8 Snow Geese present as well.  Upon clearing the first bay on the east side of the reservoir, we did spot three White-winged Scoters, presumably the same three as were there a week before.  Regrettably, the Black Scoter that has been reported here again evaded us. 

 

We returned to our vehicle to go to the west side were we counted thousands of Ring-billed Gulls with respectable numbers of Herring and California mixed in as well as a couple of Lesser Black-backed Gulls.  There was also one Common Loon still present.

 

Then we returned to Cherry Creek SP for a visit to the marina on the west side.  The middle of the lake held hundreds of Common Mergansers along with the Glaucous Gull that Glenn Walbek reported earlier.

 

Bill Kaempfer

Boulder