South platte park, Arapahoe County

[Deborah Carstensen]

The northern end of the metro South Platte River has a lot of great birds and gets a lot of great reports but I wanted to give a shout out to South Platte Park.
Today I wandered around the ponds at the southern end of the park. There were so many great waterbirds, none of them unusual but they are all beautiful and fun to watch.
I inadvertently scared up a great horned owl as I meandered through the woods.
Another nice surprise was a snipe flying towards me as I stood on the side of the pond only to veer off quickly after he saw me.
I didn't try to count numbers but here are the birds I saw:

Common mergansers
Hooded mergansers
Buffleheads
Kingfisher
Killdeer (why are they named that?)
Lesser scaup
Great horned owl
Wilsons snipe
Gadwalls
Redtail hawk
Green winged teal
Mallards
Coots
Canada geese
Northern shovelers
The sun went down before I could go to the reservoir.

This is a wonderful place to spend some time and a fabulous place to be on Christmas Eve!
Merry Christmas!

Deb Carstensen, Arapahoe County




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