Mike Serruto and I had a very enjoyable day at Jackson Lake today. In early morning, the roads for me down from SR14 east of Briggsdale to the west side Visitor Center (VC) were quite greasy and I kept hearing Paul Simon singing "Slip Sliding Away". My blue Honda is now rusty brown but it got the job done. It was cool bordering on cold, fairly windy, the mudflats stickier and stinkier than usual with the recent rain. But birds were everywhere! The Russian-olives were crawling with orange-crowned, Wilson's, yellow-rumped and Townsend's warblers, plus robins, western tanagers, flickers and house sparrows. No juncos or white-throated sparrows. We saw a few Lincoln's sparrows, green-tailed towhees and a spotted towhee. No solitaires, either, but I would wager we just missed them and maybe a sapsucker, too.
A few thousand white pelicans lined long stretches of the east side like foam or snow. Best shorebird was a RUDDY TURNSTONE that we saw on the west side out from the VC. I was intrigued by it turning over not stones but every feather it found.
Also present were at least 9 black-bellied plovers (one in full black tux), a few hundred avocets, dozens of long-billed dowitchers and stilt sandpipers, hundreds of killdeers, a few hundred Baird's sandpipers, dozens of yellowlegs of both types, a few willets, 20 or so pectoral sandpipers, scattered least sandpipers, a few black-necked stilts. We did NOT see the two American golden-plovers present last Monday but they could easily still be there, probably in the southwest corner out from the private houses.
We saw a JAEGER of undetermined species chasing gulls out from the north boat ramp. Probably parasitic but too far out and not observed for very long before we lost it.
On the beach south of the north boat ramp on the west side of the lake were at least 4 common terns of various ages, some with prominent black carpal bar, some without but with black cap extending well down onto the nape. We saw a few Forster's terns, too, a lone adult herring gull. Dominant gulls, of course, were Franklin's, ringers and Californias. We did NOT see any Bonaparte's or Sabine's gulls, despite looking. Ditto for the recently reported little gull by Dowell and Pheneger.
Probably missing 5-10 species, we still had over 65 species between 8a and 4p, all spent on the west side.
No pain, no gain. All in all, a glorious day, including the heater on the way home.
Dave Leatherman
Fort Collins
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