Spizella night flight, eastern Boulder County, Aug. 1

[Ted Floyd]

Hello, Birders.

There was a wonderful Spizella sparrow flight in the later part of the overnight hours earlier "today." I heard the first little flight call at 2:59, and they kept at it all the way until 5:00 a.m. when I went back in.

I assumed they were all Chipping Sparrows, but when I was looking at the sound spectrograms a bit later in the morning, while feeding the loud cat and getting the kids ready for soccer (do we live in an age of multi-tasking or what), I noticed that a few apparent Brewer's Sparrows had snuck in. I say "apparent" Brewer's Sparrows because I'm not sure--I doubt anybody's sure--of the overlap between Chipping and Brewer's.

The passage was straight east, the whole time. I.e., I would hear a flight call to the west, then overhead, then to the east.

Oh, and if I didn't already have West Nile Virus, I probably do now:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/30/west-nile-virus-colorado_n_3678391.html

If you're looking for the perfect excuse to witness the glorious midsummer night flight of Chipping Sparrows over Colorado's Front Range region, here ya go:

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/ataglance

Scroll down to "Saturday, August 3," although, as you can see from the text, they really mean "Sunday, August 4." Along with practically the whole solar system, you get a bunch of fantastic deep sky objects, readily viewed through decent binoculars. Plus sparrows migrating over. I can't imagine anything else I'd rather be doing at 4am Sunday morning! (Thanks to Bob Zilly for this tip.)

Ted Floyd

tedfl...@hotmail.com

Lafayette, Boulder County, Colorado

[Ted Floyd]

Yet another inducement--as if you needed one--to head out tomorrow (Sunday) morning is that the International Space Shuttle will be visible in the late 4am hour. Here's how to spot it from Boulder County:

http://tinyurl.com/find-ISS-in-Boulder

Thanks to Bob Zilly for this tip. Speaking of Bob Zilly, he and I went out this morning to Ish Reservoir, Boulder County, where we looked for meteors and planets but mainly saw clouds and haze. At one point, though, a dazzling Perseid zoomed prematurely through the sky. A few Chipping Sparrows migrated over, and we did, eventually, see planets, Messier objects, and such.

Shorebird conditions remain excellent at Ish, yet shorebirds remain essentially non-existent. The water's gone back up at Jim Hamm (boo), but it's down a bit at Panama (yay), which had distant peeps.

[Ted Floyd]

Hello, Birders. 

There was a steady flight of Chipping and maybe other Spizella sparrows during nautical dawn (basically, 5am-5:30am) this morning, Tuesday, Aug. 6th, over Lafayette, easterm Boulder County. At least 1 flight call per minute during that period.

Ted Floyd

tedfl...@hotmail.com

Lafayette, Boulder County, Colorado