[cobirds] Barr Lake today

I thought I'd follow up on my earlier post about the jaeger (more on him/her in minute) with a summary of our outing. I had my monthly museum group out at Barr Lake today, and it was a quite productive day. We started by harrassing the inimitable Meredith McB at the banding station, where she retaliated with a fusillade of Wilson's warblers, intimidating us into a quick retreat. But we'd be back.

Next stop was a walk down to the Pioneer Trail blind, where a cooperative peregrine falcon posed on a snag for us. A quick scope scan of the lake revealed hundreds of western grebes, and with a little imagination we converted a few of them into Clark's. That's our story, and we're stickin' to it....We had good numbers of orange-crowned, yellow-rumped and Wilson's warblers. However, my entry of eight orange-crowns was roundly rebuked by eBird, and it didn't like my western wood-pewee either, which kind of hurt my feelings. But I persisted, and Mr. eBird relented. We then slunk back to the banding station, where Meredith cut us some slack, as well as a couple of good birds. A nice Hammond's flycatcher (a small individual with some characteristics overlapping with least) emerged from a bag, followed by a hermit thrush. Then came a mystery sparrow, which after some discussion we agreed to call a Lincoln's, and a sorry one indeed. The poor bird looked like it had been in bar fight and lost.

Elbowed aside by the sixth or seventh busload of grade-schoolers (Meredith, how do you do it?), we set out for the lake, where out by the island was a sizable flock of gulls that we could no longer ignore with good conscience. The group proved to consist of 100+ Californias, with a smattering of ringers, Franklins and a herring or two. Some searching turned up a Sabine's lurking behind a ponderous Cal, followed by another fly-by Sabine's.

Next up was the Neidrach Trail and boardwalk. Things initially didn't look too promising, but we did pick up a couple of eared grebes and a few assorted ducks. A couple of birds lurking on the distant grassy beach yielded several mis-identifications until we finally decided to trek down the trail for a closer look. They quickly proved to be plovers, and finally, two American golden-plovers. Other than a couple of killdeer, they were the only shorebirds we saw all day. by this time I was beginning to feel like a certified eBird reject.

We closed things out with a jaeger sp that was coursing back and forth across the lake to the northeast. After following it with binos at considerable distance for a minute, we thought we saw it settle on the water far down the lake, closer to the dam. So, we hoofed it back to the parking lot and headed down to the boat launch to see if we could refind the bird. We could not. I will be interest to see if it reappears. While we were walking/driving down to the launch, the bird had plenty of time to relocate. Our consolation prize was a couple more Sabine's, which may or may not have been the same two we had seen to the west earlier.

Please post if you 1) relocate the jeager and 2) have any idea which species it is. 

Norm Lewis

Lakewood, CO

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