[cobirds] Bazillion Blackbirds at Jim Hamm Nature Area (Boulder CO) Again

All:

It's Late September, and that means Jim Hamm Nature Area in Longmont (County Line Rd & 17th Ave in Longmont) is a temporary home to a LOT of roosting birds.  I've been documenting this really cool phenomena for several years now, and it's quite a sight to see.

Overall mix is (I'm spitballing here) is maybe 40%  each of Yellow-headed and Red-winged Blackbirds, and maybe 20% Starlings.  Not to say there aren't a few Grackles, and occasional Great-tailed and some Brewer's in there as well.

Here's my video from today:  https://youtu.be/byuHElE7jLM.  I'd love to get some back up on count estimates of how many birds leave here in the morning, my guess is it's many 10's of thousands.  I listed in Ebird 10k each for the two BB species and 5K for Starlings.  Stop the video around 40 seconds and try to count!  I put it on the 55" TV and my head just.... exploded.  Today was a really good # of birds, but I've seen a lot more in some years.    Like to other videos here: 

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jay+hutchins+%2B+jim+hamm

Sun morning I saw the "plume" of birds across central Longmont and I'm guessing it was at least 1 mile long.  It's fun to watch them arrive at dusk, but they come in in dribs and drabs.  Sunrise is when they do the mass departure, and the amount of sound they create is amazing.  Today the group left at 6:40 am.

Like every other year, they start this in September, and go until.... whenever they feel like heading south.  It's not always a specific cold snap or storm front that will get them to migrate, sometimes I'll see 50K birds on one day, they next day they are gone.

Hope to see some of you out there over the next week or two!

Jay Hutchins

Boulder CO

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to cobirds+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/1861e6e4-d18e-4f70-bebf-19d60d0e7b70n%40googlegroups.com.