Pawnee Grasslands today, 16April2018
DAVID A LEATHERMAN
I got started earlier today, arriving in the area of where CO-WY-NE come together about 6:15am. I had success with Sharp-tailed Grouse, seeing 4 of them between 6:15 and 6:39am. The first one was on the north side of Weld CR128 about a mile e of Weld CR105. The other three were west of CR111 about a half mile north of CR128. All were in native or Conservation Reserve Program grass, and all four eventually flew off on their own accord. They acted to me the way grouse leave leks after the morning's activities have concluded. Pics show two females, highly cropped, sorry.
Other highlights of the 12-hour visit to the Pawnee Grasslands included:
*5 different Rough-legged Hawks
*1 Northern Shrike
*4 Loggerhead Shrikes (one of which had impaled two grasshoppers, the first impaling I've seen this spring)
*1 Swainson's Hawk (FOY for me) just n of Grover.
*1 migrant male Audubon's Yellow-rumped Warbler nw of Grover in a riparian area
*A modest smattering (i.e., not a zillion) of Vesper Sparrows (compared to just a few on 4/12
*2 Mountain Plovers on the e side of Weld CR79 maybe a half mile south of SR14 moving in between a winter wheat strip and a fallow field strip (easy to see in the green winter wheat, virtually invisible in the brown fallow strip). Interestingly, a nearby Horned Lark was tearing shreds of brown leaf material from the fallow plants shown in the plover pic (corn or wheat?) for use in a nest it was apparently making nearby.
*Approximately 10 Chestnut-collared Longspurs (two areas with multiple individuals were Weld CR115 n of 134 and Weld CR112 between 45 & 49)
*At A&B Reservoir #1 on Weld CR124 a few miles w of CR77 were two Eared Grebes, a pair of Canvasbacks and several Ruddy Ducks
*At Crow Valley CG was a Rock Wren hopping all over the Main Picnic area, and a female Golden-crowned Kinglet in the sw corner junipers (in the pic, the wren has a Bold Jumping Spider (Phidippus audax) found in a large hole going down into the ground beside a cottonwood stump).
Dave Leatherman
Fort Collins
