Re: [cobirds] tell it to me straight.... finding a Lapland Longspur

Just my personal experience -a good time to look for Lapland Longspurs is when the ground is covered in snow but the dirt roads aren't - when that happens, I tend to find them along the roads/fencelines.  If the fields are open, it seems they are more likely to be off in some field where they would be harder to spot.

Diana Beatty

El Paso County

On Thu, Oct 29, 2020 at 8:38 AM 'ronbco' via Colorado Birds <cobirds@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I'm a reasonably passionate birder, but not very patient.

I saw an ebird post for a Lapland Longspur nearby my home and since it would be a lifer I went to look; no success, but again, I am not patient.

Looking at ebird stats for the area (Loveland/Longmont) it seems that sitings are not common. My general impression is that they are seen in onsey/twosey out in the middle of fields, and you need to use a scope and be patient.

The siting I was acting on yesterday had one in a flock of horned larks. When I arrived at the location, on queue, a flock of something swirled around, too far for me to id. I watched the area for about 15 min and saw very active flocks of probably horned larks and certainly meadowlarks. They would usually settle in the midst of grass that was too high to site them in.

So my questions are:

- is the above experience typical?

- are they and their friends so skittish that you will never get within 100 yds?

- if I spent say a few hours on a sunny winter day walking a field slowly might I get a good look

- are the id marks distinctive enough that I will likely feel confident?

- do they hang with meadow larks, or just horned?

Ron Bolton

Berthoud

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