Today I decided to make a loop that I had not completed in a while, including a lengthy north-south pass through Elbert County, Ramah SWA in El Paso, and Castlewood Canyon in Douglas County. My route through Elbert yielded a lot of birds but most were of the "usual suspects" variety and I won't waste time detailing them here. The real excitement was at Ramah, centered primarily on shorebirds. Landbirding was pretty good, but the only notable species was a single red-headed woodpecker. At the reservoir I parked in the lot at the northwest corner and walked the entire west side of the lake, with high hopes for some of the recently reported sandpipers. The results were somewhat unsatisfactory as I walked south, with a single avocet and small flock of Wilson's phalaropes being the only shorebirds joining the ubiquitous killdeer. However, at the far south end, hoping for white-rumped sandpipers, I instead found a single peep which proved to be a late Baird's. The standing bird lacked the flank streaking of white-rumps, and when it flew it displayed a dark rump. Nice, but not what I had in mind. Which is how these things usually go. The Baird's was joined by several more avocets, and I was beginning to think that this would be it for shorebirds. Apparently as I was walking south though, some sneaky sandpipers were filling in behind me, for as I returned north, I saw in the distance what looked like more peeps. Things were looking up!
Once I got close enough for a good look, the group proved to contain four stilt sandpipers (late), and an indeterminate number of white-rumps and semi-palmateds. Between the constant movement of the birds and their uncanny ability to look like pond scum, I was never able to get a satisfactory count. I'd say there were about eight of each, give or take.
I continued to approach, wanting to A) get better looks, and B) get a look/photo at the rumps in flight (while not wanting to resemble a shorebird perv). I have included a rather poor photo which shows the birds landing up the shore from me, with a nice mix of white-rump and semi-palmated butts. A couple of startled phals had to be wondering why this bunch had to land on their particular patch of beach. I have felt that way about spring-breaking teens, but that's another story.....
Oh, and I picked up one bobolink at Winkler Ranch below Castlewood before being chased home by rain.
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