Centennial & Littleton - Arapahoe

[Jared Del Rosso]

This morning (2/18), I visited Chapel Hill Memorial Gardens (Arapahoe) to check for the Harris's Sparrow. I hadn't seen the bird since December, but I've only made a few, brief trips to the cemetery to look for it this year. The hedge row along the cemetery's western edge was busy with juncos and chickadees. Several of the juncos seemed to be practicing their songs, making all sort of strange, garbled noises. Amid that, I thought I heard the Harris's practice its, but only once and not definitively. A juvenile Cooper's swung by and quieted the lot. I stuck around for a bit longer and was glad to have. The Cooper's flew off, the juncos starting singing again, and a Mountain Chickadee, my first at the cemetery, appeared amid the Black-capped. And then the Harris's emerged from wherever it had been hiding, taking a just-above-eye-level perch in the open.

From there, I headed to Littleton to look for the Brant at Ketring, a potential lifer for me and a potential new bird for me in my three mile home circle. On my way to the Ketring, I noted a large flock of white-cheeked geese at Gallup Park (across the street from Ketring). I hurried to the lake anyway, finding a good number of ducks and few geese. The Hermit Thrush was in the brushy stuff near between lake and open fields.

I gave up on Ketring and hurried over to inspect the goose flock at Gallup. Most seemed like Cackling; all seemed to want to keep their heads buried in the grass and their necks turned away from me. I got a better angle on them and the flock seemed to split, leaving the Brant in the front and middle of all the white-cheeked geese. 

- Jared Del Rosso

Centennial, CO