Boulder County, March 7
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Ted Floyd
Mar 7, 2020, 11:22:54 PM3/7/20
to Colorado Birds
Hey, all. Nice day to be out and about, eh?
After a quite late start (bit of a story...), Andrew Floyd and Mason Dinaar and I headed into the Boulder County foothills. At the monster trailhead at Heil Valley Ranch, every conceivable parking space--legal and illegal--was full, so I dropped the lads off and retreated south a short ways to the Joder Ranch trailhead, where there was one (1) other car. Go figure.
Joder had a marvelous flock of mountain bluebirds plucking caterpillars off the ground. They left the big millipede alone, though; Tom Schultz, over at Arthropods Colorado, tells me it was in the genus Spirobolida. Lots of Woodhouse scrub-jays there, too. Farther along the trail, where the ponderosa pines start to get thick, there were type 2 red crossbills kwewping, tooping, and even full-on singing. <--That song wasn't given by an adult male, by the way.
Joder had a marvelous flock of mountain bluebirds plucking caterpillars off the ground. They left the big millipede alone, though; Tom Schultz, over at Arthropods Colorado, tells me it was in the genus Spirobolida. Lots of Woodhouse scrub-jays there, too. Farther along the trail, where the ponderosa pines start to get thick, there were type 2 red crossbills kwewping, tooping, and even full-on singing. <--That song wasn't given by an adult male, by the way.
As I was headed back to Heil Valley Ranch to pick up Andrew and Mason, I ran into (and nearly ran over) Carl Bendorf, who had attracted a biblical plague of dickey birds to the general vicinity of his parked car. Of note was a type 2 red crossbill incessantly tooping. By the way, the schnozzes of type 2s are really large. Wish I'd gotten to the Heil parking lot (still packed beyond capacity) just a tad earlier, for Andrew had just photo'd a comma--a hoary comma, we believe--on his bike. Up in the woods, Andrew and Mason got astonishing video of 20 wild turkeys digging in the ground for food; what's up with that?
Okay, then it was over to Centennial Middle School (why not?) to audio-record a spotted towhee (again, why not?). It's often frustrating when the "wrong" bird audio-bombs your recording, but how 'bout when the "wrong" bird is a refulgent northern cardinal! There was a barely audible cedar waxwing here, too, my first detection this year of the 2020 ABA Bird of the Year.
Later in the day, I walked around Greenlee Preserve & environs, eastern Boulder County. No rarities, but it was nice to see bushtits (and Karen Axe with the bushtits), searingly beautiful redheads in the setting sun, both male and female great horned owls hooting well before sundown, and an impressively vocal Cooper hawk, an adult female, I believe.
Alrighty, I gotta go now, and lose an hour of sleep. Whose dumb idea was that anyhow?
Ted Floyd
Okay, then it was over to Centennial Middle School (why not?) to audio-record a spotted towhee (again, why not?). It's often frustrating when the "wrong" bird audio-bombs your recording, but how 'bout when the "wrong" bird is a refulgent northern cardinal! There was a barely audible cedar waxwing here, too, my first detection this year of the 2020 ABA Bird of the Year.
Later in the day, I walked around Greenlee Preserve & environs, eastern Boulder County. No rarities, but it was nice to see bushtits (and Karen Axe with the bushtits), searingly beautiful redheads in the setting sun, both male and female great horned owls hooting well before sundown, and an impressively vocal Cooper hawk, an adult female, I believe.
Alrighty, I gotta go now, and lose an hour of sleep. Whose dumb idea was that anyhow?
Ted Floyd
Lafayette, Boulder County
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