11,000 Red-necked Phalaropes

[mvjo...@gmail.com]

In the last 2 days, wife Lisa and I have completed bird surveys in the San Luis Valley. Yesterday I reported more than 3,000 Red-necked Phalaropes at San Luis Lake, which is open to birders. Today, Lisa reports 8,000 RN Phalaropes at Blanca Wetlands, which is still closed for the nesting season. That brings the total to 11,000 plus for the 2 days, which is highest numbers ever recorded for the San Luis Valley. This surpasses the "several thousand" reported by Spencer et al in 2008!

Perhaps these cold fronts have held them back, and like a dam bursting, have resulted in a huge surge for this species.

John Rawinski

Monte Vista, CO

[William H Kaempfer]

John’s Red-necked Phalarope numbers had me wondering how many were reported on eBird this weekend, a venue that John doesn’t use.  I came up with 2,312 by taking the top reported number at each eBird site.  That gets Colorado to over 13,000, and I suspect the total number may have been 25,000 to 30.000 in the state this weekend.  Conversely, I spent a lot of time in Central Nebraska this past weekend at some great water-bird spots and I saw a total of 0 RNPH.

 

Bill Kaempfer

Boulder

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[mvjo...@gmail.com]

Well Bill.....its hard to do everything and with raising two very active teenaged daughters, running the San Luis Valley Bird Network, part time work as naturalist at the Zapata Ranch, keeping local bird records for the San Luis Valley, and recording all the information for seasonal reports, my time gets a little thin. Ebird is a great tool, just not in the priority loop at this time.

John Rawinski

Monte Vista, CO