Weld Perambulations: Iceland Gull and others

[Steven Mlodinow]

Greetings All

Having dug out from my return from Aruba (and starting work on a few projects), I got out birding yesterday, Wednesday. Sorry for the delayed post. 

It was a goosey world, sorting thru 13000 Cackling Geese out of 22000 Cackling/Canada Geese in total. The array of presentations was baffling, and some birds well seen defied identification, not only to subspecies, but to species as well. Taverner's seemed more prevalent, such as a flock of 40+ that flew in together at a development near Severance. 

The highlight was a second year ICELAND GULL at Woods Lake, which is about 20% open. Also present there was a first cycle LESSER BLACK BACKED GULL. 

The other highlights were entirely of the hybrid sort, including

SNOW x CANADA, SNOW x CACKLING, ROSS'S x CANADA and ROSS'S x CACKLING at various locations. I think I had about 10 hybrids in all, and with better looks at the flocks, more would've undoubtedly been found. 6 GWF Geese were found, total, at 3 locations. A Mallard x Mexican Duck was at Windsor Lake and a Mallard x Northern Pintail was at a dairy pond north of Kersey.

Poor quality photos of the Iceland Gull, but some fairly good shots of some of the hybrid geese, can be seen at http://www.flickr.com/photos/36088296@N08/

Of note, most of the water around Greeley was still in solid form (that would be ice) including Stewart's Pond, Loloff, and Weld CR 59 Pond. Latham was 95% frozen. Angel was an ice cube. Woods was about 20% open, hence the good birds there, and Windsor Reservoir was starting to open up at its northern end. 

Timnath was mostly frozen as was Fossil Creek... but to the south, Terry, McIntosh, Union all had lotsa open water; Frederick does as well. 

Status by this weekend ??? Likely a lot more open water, but perhaps time spent near the Front Range would be more productive as the Greeley area may well still be mostly icebound.

Cheers

Steve Mlodinow