[cobirds] Poudre River on both sides of Prospect Road west of the Poudre River, Fort Collins (Larimer) on 5/6

I walked the river on both sides of Prospect Road west of the Poudre River in Fort Collins today for 8 hours minus an hour break for lunch.  Not a ton of birds moving except for Yellow-rumped Warblers.  Good numbers of Orange-crowned Warblers, first handful of Yellow Warblers I've seen this spring.

Other notable items:

Cinnamon Teal (2m, 1f, feeding on what appeared to be algae in the shallows of the river north of Prospect)

                                

Blue-winged Teal (at least 5, "                  "                                   ")

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher (2)

Bullock's Oriole (2)

House Wren (zillion, estimate)

Barn Owl (1)

Wood Duck (at least 3 pairs).  Both members of one pair (male shown below) would retreat to the protection of a river-overhanging Russian-olive when disturbed.  Olives have become a staple of this duck since the tree's introduction into NA over a century ago.)

                                                   

Empid (1 along bike trail north of Environmental Learning Center parking lot, never got good look, "whit" call note which narrows it down to about the entire genus Empidonax, suspect Dusky based on glimpse and date).

Rose-breasted Grosbeak (1 female, pink unicolored beak, yellow underwing, mere rows of pale dots for "wingbars", pale underparts with little streaking, eating seed pods forming on female catkins, poor photo)

                                                                

FOY sparrows for me today included several Clay-colored and three Lark.  There was 1 Lincolns, 1 Green-tailed Towhee, 1 Spotted Towhee, several Chipping Sparrows, a few Song Sparrows, a few White-crowns (all gambelii).

One of the willow leaf beetles (Chrysomela knabi) is again common this year along the river in coyote willows in FC (and at Golden Ponds in Longmont) and will be food for birds.  Last year I was able to observe both Song Sparrows and Great Egrets eating these ladybird beetle lookalikes.  Today Yellow Warblers, Yellow-rumped Warblers and a gnatcatcher were in these infested willows but I could not confirm what they were getting.

                                                                          

No thrushes other than robins, no vireos, no tanagers, no buntings.  Only 1 individual grosbeak, only 1 individual flycatcher, two individual orioles.

Total of 55 species.

Dave Leatherman

Fort Collins