Hey, all.
Where was I again? š
Ah yes. On the road, and now out in the Muddy Creek drainage, in the Routt National Forest, Grand Co. What a great spot. It is, in my experience, the best straight-up birding stop along U.S. 40 in the whole of the Rabbit Ears passes, plural, region. Crossbills stole the show there yesterday morning, with both type 2 red crossbills and type 5 red crossbills in gratifying plenitudinousness.
Type 2 is the red crossbill most familiar to birders along the I-25 urban corridor. Its flight call is powerful and pounding, sharply down-slurred, with a kink or crook in the middle. Here's one of the Muddy Creek type 2s:
Type 2 is also known as the "ponderosa pine" red crossbill. The tree was recently split (by scientists, not by loggers), with ours being Pinus scopulorum, the Rocky Mountains ponderosa pine, and crossbill expert Craig Benkman tells me that P. scopulorum is preferred by type 2; P. ponderosa sensu stricto, occurring farther west, is less favored. So "our" ponderosa pine is the real deal. All that said, there are no ponderosa pines, of any sort, so far as I can surmise, in, or anywhere particularly close to, the Routt National Forest. Go figure. Birds have wings.
There were however, lodgepole pines, Pinus contorta, all over the place, and, unsurprisingly, a great many type 5 red crossbills. The flight call of type 5 is sharply down-slurred, like that of type 2, but that's about the end of the similarities. Type 5's flight call has two discrete components; our defective human ears and brains—it's more of a brain problem, really, than an ear problem—don't hear the two components; instead, we hear a single, rather flat or dry note, distinct, with some practice, from the pounding, ringing flight call of type 2. Here's one of the Muddy Creek type 5s:
Crossbills weren't the only finches in the Muddy Creek drainage. Along about a mile of the U.S. Forest Service road there, I saw/heard two type 4 evening grosbeaks, eight pine grosbeaks, five Cassin finches, and about 70 pine siskins. Raptors: seeing both a golden eagle and an American goshawk up there was a thrill. Breeders: Mountain white-crowned sparrows, Lincoln sparrows, and Wilson warblers were still hanging on in decent numbers; a bit tardy was a Hammond flycatcher that even gave a brief snippet of song. Regulids: I heard twice as many ruby-crowned kinglets as golden-crowned kinglets, a sorry testament to my diminished hearing, rather than the actual relative abundance of the two species there. Canada jays: oh yes.
Anyhow, I eventually, and reluctantly, pulled myself away from the Muddy Creek drainage, and so shall we.
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Yesterday, Labor Day, Mon., Sept. 7, I did a bit of birding along U.S. Hwy 40 from Hayden, Routt Co., to Berthoud Pass, Grand & Clear Creek cos. Things started off with a wakeup call from sandhill cranes and a small flock of type 4 evening grosbeaks at the Carpenter Ranch. Type 4 is the expected evening grosbeak in Colorado, with a distinctive "lower-case n" flight call. Here's a spectrogram of one of the Carpenter Ranch birds:
The expected grosbeak type here, yes, but...who knows? Recordings of type 1 outnumber those of type 4 on the other side of the hill, in Salt Lake Co., Utah, and type 1 apparently occurs regularly all the way into Daggett & Uintah cos., Utah, practically in Colo. Birders in w. Colo. should absolutely be on the lookout for type 1 evening grosbeaks, as was nicely attested by Saturday's Colorado Birding Challenge effort by Nathan Pieplow & Company in Dolores Co. Meanwhile, the evening grosbeaks of the Black Hills, South Dakota, may be type 3s. Again, who knows! Fortunately, evening grosbeak call types are loud, low-pitched, and easily recorded, with a cellphone being fine for most purposes; we birders are well positioned to make cool contributions to the basic natural history of the species, or species complex.
The expected grosbeak type here, yes, but...who knows? Recordings of type 1 outnumber those of type 4 on the other side of the hill, in Salt Lake Co., Utah, and type 1 apparently occurs regularly all the way into Daggett & Uintah cos., Utah, practically in Colo. Birders in w. Colo. should absolutely be on the lookout for type 1 evening grosbeaks, as was nicely attested by Saturday's Colorado Birding Challenge effort by Nathan Pieplow & Company in Dolores Co. Meanwhile, the evening grosbeaks of the Black Hills, South Dakota, may be type 3s. Again, who knows! Fortunately, evening grosbeak call types are loud, low-pitched, and easily recorded, with a cellphone being fine for most purposes; we birders are well positioned to make cool contributions to the basic natural history of the species, or species complex.
Where was I again? š
Ah yes. On the road, and now out in the Muddy Creek drainage, in the Routt National Forest, Grand Co. What a great spot. It is, in my experience, the best straight-up birding stop along U.S. 40 in the whole of the Rabbit Ears passes, plural, region. Crossbills stole the show there yesterday morning, with both type 2 red crossbills and type 5 red crossbills in gratifying plenitudinousness.
Type 2 is the red crossbill most familiar to birders along the I-25 urban corridor. Its flight call is powerful and pounding, sharply down-slurred, with a kink or crook in the middle. Here's one of the Muddy Creek type 2s:
Type 2 is also known as the "ponderosa pine" red crossbill. The tree was recently split (by scientists, not by loggers), with ours being Pinus scopulorum, the Rocky Mountains ponderosa pine, and crossbill expert Craig Benkman tells me that P. scopulorum is preferred by type 2; P. ponderosa sensu stricto, occurring farther west, is less favored. So "our" ponderosa pine is the real deal. All that said, there are no ponderosa pines, of any sort, so far as I can surmise, in, or anywhere particularly close to, the Routt National Forest. Go figure. Birds have wings.
There were however, lodgepole pines, Pinus contorta, all over the place, and, unsurprisingly, a great many type 5 red crossbills. The flight call of type 5 is sharply down-slurred, like that of type 2, but that's about the end of the similarities. Type 5's flight call has two discrete components; our defective human ears and brains—it's more of a brain problem, really, than an ear problem—don't hear the two components; instead, we hear a single, rather flat or dry note, distinct, with some practice, from the pounding, ringing flight call of type 2. Here's one of the Muddy Creek type 5s:
Crossbills weren't the only finches in the Muddy Creek drainage. Along about a mile of the U.S. Forest Service road there, I saw/heard two type 4 evening grosbeaks, eight pine grosbeaks, five Cassin finches, and about 70 pine siskins. Raptors: seeing both a golden eagle and an American goshawk up there was a thrill. Breeders: Mountain white-crowned sparrows, Lincoln sparrows, and Wilson warblers were still hanging on in decent numbers; a bit tardy was a Hammond flycatcher that even gave a brief snippet of song. Regulids: I heard twice as many ruby-crowned kinglets as golden-crowned kinglets, a sorry testament to my diminished hearing, rather than the actual relative abundance of the two species there. Canada jays: oh yes.
Anyhow, I eventually, and reluctantly, pulled myself away from the Muddy Creek drainage, and so shall we.
Grand Co. reservoirs along U.S. 40 were depressing. The water is extremely low at both Wolford Mountain and Williams Fork reservoirs. At Windy Gap Reservoir, there was, well, too much water—so much so that the shoreline was flooded. I had a grand total of zero shorebirds at the three reservoirs. (And a few days earlier, at almost-gone Green Mountain Reservoir, south of Kremmling, the same result, or non-result.)
The Fraser "River" at the Winter Park ski resort had a skyful of type 2 red crossbills, and, just as at Muddy Creek, nary a ponderosa pine to be seen. The "river" itself had many migrants, all common species: chipping sparrow, Brewer sparrow, Audubon warbler, and Wilson warbler. Cool to seem out on the rocks, where they were hunting bugs.
Berthoud Pass had no crossbills, for whatever reason, but did have a coupla nice American three-toed woodpeckers.
And then, OMG, the drive back to the metro region in stop-and-go, mostly "stop," Labor Day traffic. But it wasn't all that bad. Check this out. The dudes in front of me, in a pickup truck larger than anybody "needs" and emblazoned with a Blue Lives Matter flag, had this elk-calling contraption that they activated endlessly and that was freakishly hi-fi. And loud. Was it ever loud. Not gonna lie, those guys delivered much needed cheer and quirk during what otherwise would have been about the most miserable two hours of my life—and the lives of all others within earshot of their contraption. Will wonders never cease?
Ted Floyd
Lafayette, Boulder Co.
The Fraser "River" at the Winter Park ski resort had a skyful of type 2 red crossbills, and, just as at Muddy Creek, nary a ponderosa pine to be seen. The "river" itself had many migrants, all common species: chipping sparrow, Brewer sparrow, Audubon warbler, and Wilson warbler. Cool to seem out on the rocks, where they were hunting bugs.
Berthoud Pass had no crossbills, for whatever reason, but did have a coupla nice American three-toed woodpeckers.
And then, OMG, the drive back to the metro region in stop-and-go, mostly "stop," Labor Day traffic. But it wasn't all that bad. Check this out. The dudes in front of me, in a pickup truck larger than anybody "needs" and emblazoned with a Blue Lives Matter flag, had this elk-calling contraption that they activated endlessly and that was freakishly hi-fi. And loud. Was it ever loud. Not gonna lie, those guys delivered much needed cheer and quirk during what otherwise would have been about the most miserable two hours of my life—and the lives of all others within earshot of their contraption. Will wonders never cease?
Ted Floyd
Lafayette, Boulder Co.
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