What The Arsenal looks like of late

[Ted Floyd]

Hey, all.

With Rick Wright, I did a quickish spin around Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, Adams Co., earlier this soppingly wet Fri. afternoon, June 16. Here's the view from the auto loop looking east toward Rattlesnake Hill:

I've never seen The Arsenal so green, and I've never seen so many snowy egrets at The Arsenal; we encountered three large flocks actually out on the prairie. Parts of The Arsenal look like the exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science of Colorado when it was covered by the Western Interior Seaway, which, when I was a kid, we called the Niobraran Sea. Just water everywhere. Also out there: a Mississippi kite continuing near the south end of Lake Ladora; a cattle egret in one of the snowy egret flocks; an eastern warbling vireo at the first creek crossing on the bison range proper; a cedar waxwing (just the one!) at the south end of Ladora; 4 or 5 grasshopper sparrows (plus, I assume, all the ones we couldn't hear); lark buntings everywhere, singing in the rain. A wonderful showing, too, by the snowball sand verbena Abronia fragrans, and western spiderwort, Tradescantia occidentalis.

A few odds & ends:

Wed.–Thurs., June 14–15, in the Gilpin Co. hinterlands west of Central City, Andrew Floyd and I saw and heard at least 3 northern goshawks, plus Hammond flycatchers everywhere. The crossbills up there were, spectrographically, all type 2s.

Fri., June 9, along the Fowler Trail in Boulder Co., Brian Small and I saw and heard a Cassin vireo singing and acting most territorial; photos and spectrographic analysis confirm the identification. What an odd record for a dry ponderosa pine forest east of the Continental Divide in the second week of June. Also, a nice adult male lazigo bunting in the burn where the Melanerpes woodpeckers used to be. And type 2 crossbills there, too.

Right now, as I type in the semi-darkness and gentle rain, a western wood-pewee is calling here in residential Lafayette. It's a late migrant. Stuff is still going through.

Ted Floyd
Lafayette, Boulder Co.