I woke early, pealing myself out of bed around 4:30 today (5/24), in anticipation of meeting Rebecca Laroche and Chris Rurik at deKoevend Park (Arapahoe Co.) a few hours later. I ate breakfast believing I might go out early and look for owls. But it dawned on me, as the sky lit before I finished my coffee, that there was no chance of that. So I worked around my yard and listened for the MacGillivray's Warbler that's been around for the past week and, perhaps, since May 8. I didn't hear it, but a singing Wilson's Warbler, the first I've found in my yard this year, was a nice consolation.
A bit after 6:30, Chris, Rebecca, and I met at deKoevend, where we walked the western portion of the park, moving from the area behind the rec center toward the southern edge where the Rose-breasted Grosbeak has been. We probably should have started on that edge. By the time we got there, the city was mowing the playing fields. We struggled to hear each other, let alone the birds, over the noise of the three or four mowers.
But the walk was productive. We had a singing Lazuli Bunting take a break from its song and work the very edge of the canal. As we made our way south, we heard and saw several Warbling Vireos, at least one of which sang. The same for a few Bullock's Orioles and Western Tanagers. High in a tree, near the southeastern corner, was a Swainson's Thrush. Almost directly behind it, perched on an electrical line and right outside an apartment window (staring in, menacingly), was a Red-tailed Hawk.
As we made our way further south along the High Line, we all swore that the robin-like song we were hearing was paced too quickly to belong to a robin. A grosbeak, we agreed. We hustled toward the bird, found it conspicuously singing from a tree's edge near where the Dry Creek enters deKoevend, and celebrated…a rose-breasted…no, well, a red-breasted robin after all. Woops.
Near that robin, we heard an intriguing song and an unfamiliar call. The song, we discovered, belonged to an American Goldfinch, not the Indigo Bunting that I've convinced myself will one day show up in west Arapahoe. Again, woops. But we followed that unfamiliar call for a time and Chris picked out a deep red bird high in the tree. We all got poor but definitive looks at a male Orchard Oriole. The best view came as it perched at the tree's edge. Chris and I aimed our cameras, and the bird flew off before either of us got a photo. It didn't go far, though. We found it in an adjacent tree, which it shared with a Bullock's Oriole.
We closed out our time at deKoevend by walking along the Big Dry Creek through the park's playing fields. We didn't find signs of the Rose-breasted Grosbeak, but the mowers were still going so we might not have heard it even if it was there. We did see a female Black-headed Grosbeak along the creek, though.
We left deKoevend, and headed northeast, stopping briefly at the High Line Canal Trail off of S. Colorado Blvd., near where the Little Dry Creek intersects the High Line. A pair of Wood Ducks, flickers visiting apparent nest cavities and inspecting us as we passed (bird watching goes both ways, after all), a Broad-tailed Hummingbird (perched at eye-level), and another Warbling Vireo were our best birds. We also got a look at a raccoon resting in a tree cavity.
Our third and final stop was at Three Ponds Park in Cherry Hills Village, more or less directly north. The hope was to see a Green Heron, as eBird shows some visits from the bird over the past decade and some evidence of nesting in this area. We'd walk from Three Ponds Park to Blackmer Lake, finding no Green Herons, but one distant Black-crowned Night Heron and one flyover Snowy Egret. Chris commented, early in the walk, that the day had already been a good one and, if we didn't see anything else of note, it'd stay a good one.
He was right, after all. The Orchard Oriole was a county bird for Chris and me; it had repaid us, even after we'd botched the robin's and the goldfinch's songs. At deKoevend, nearly all the migrants were singing, alternatively hiding, which allowed us to work to find them, and, then, finding a conspicuous perch, which allowed us to appreciate them. Even the Wood Ducks at the Little Dry Creek played along, waddling slowly away from us as we watched them, rather than fleeing while screeching as they so often do.
Thankfully, the day paid no regard to Chris's sentiment. On the walk from Three Ponds to Blackmer, we unintentionally flushed an oddly-shaped, ground-hugging, neckless and tailless bird. We all watched as it passed by us. The three of us had no doubt about what we saw and we said so after the bird disappeared into the long grass and brush: poorwill!, a county bird for us all. The encounter stupefied me. What good, dumb luck to meet this bird here. And to do so with Chris & Rebecca was especially meaningful, our paths having crossed through the Denver Botanic Gardens, largely due to the cooperative poorwills there. At some point over our hour long walk to Blackmer and back again, Chris & Rebecca may have grown tired of me shaking my head and muttering, "I can't believe it…." If they did, they didn't let on…
Along the walk from the park to Blackmer Lake…more Warbling Vireos, more Western Tanagers, and a singing Gray Catbird. At Blackmer Lake, Rebecca heard a Western Kingbird; on our way out, we spotted three of them. We all got different look—all terrible—at an empid., possibly a Least, before the bird disappeared into a thicket.
On the walk back to the park, we spotted a Cooper's Hawk on the High Line near what might have been its nest. We didn't relocate the poorwill, but we didn't really try to.
We went our separate ways from Three Pond Park, the midday heat and work calling us each home. I drove back to Centennial slowly, content and lazy, listening, on repeat, to Magnolia Electric Co.'s twangy ode to the poorwill's eastern counterpart, "Whip-poor-will."
- Jared Del Rosso
Centennial, CO
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