Great Backyard Bird Count varia, Feb. 17-20
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Ted Floyd
Feb 20, 2023, 8:22:46 PM2/20/23
to Colorado Birds
Well, the Great Backyard Bird Count, held Fri.-Mon., Feb. 17-20, 2023, is almost over. What did folks eBird this past "weekend"? I'll start.
Fri. afternoon, Feb. 17, with John & Barb Hallowell, Hecla Pond, Louisville, Boulder Co. It was a treat to watch, and especially to hear, drake redheads sing. Really!--they sing. Marvelously so. A haunting whistle. It's a soft call, but it carries well, and calm days in late winter are the time to go out and listen. Right now. Here's one of the redheads singing at Hecla:
Sat. morning, Feb. 18, with Claire Wayner, Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, Adams Co. At sunrise, several big pods of snow geese, way up there, migrating north. Highlight along the auto loop was a dark-morph juvenile ferruginous hawk. Wonderful to hear horned larks singing along the auto loop. Mary's Lake had a swamp sparrow and 2 Harris sparrows, including this one:
Sun. morning, Feb. 19, with LeAnn Pilger, Tanja Britton, Jenyva Fox, Kelly Smith, and Hannah Floyd, Garden of the Gods, El Paso Co. Outrageous scenery and a bachelor herd of 14 bighorn sheep. Also prairie falcons copulating, canyon wrens scaling the rock faces, and hundreds of Bohemian waxwings. One of the waxwing flocks had precisely 250 individuals:
Sun. afternoon, Feb. 20, with Claire Wayner and Hannah Floyd. Went to the Millennium Hotel, Boulder Co., for access to Boulder Creek, but were turned away by the police in the wake of an active shooter situation at the hotel. Found alternative parking, and, as soon as we got down along the creek, an American dipper:
Fri. afternoon, Feb. 17, with John & Barb Hallowell, Hecla Pond, Louisville, Boulder Co. It was a treat to watch, and especially to hear, drake redheads sing. Really!--they sing. Marvelously so. A haunting whistle. It's a soft call, but it carries well, and calm days in late winter are the time to go out and listen. Right now. Here's one of the redheads singing at Hecla:
Sat. morning, Feb. 18, with Claire Wayner, Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, Adams Co. At sunrise, several big pods of snow geese, way up there, migrating north. Highlight along the auto loop was a dark-morph juvenile ferruginous hawk. Wonderful to hear horned larks singing along the auto loop. Mary's Lake had a swamp sparrow and 2 Harris sparrows, including this one:
Sun. morning, Feb. 19, with LeAnn Pilger, Tanja Britton, Jenyva Fox, Kelly Smith, and Hannah Floyd, Garden of the Gods, El Paso Co. Outrageous scenery and a bachelor herd of 14 bighorn sheep. Also prairie falcons copulating, canyon wrens scaling the rock faces, and hundreds of Bohemian waxwings. One of the waxwing flocks had precisely 250 individuals:
Sun. afternoon, Feb. 20, with Claire Wayner and Hannah Floyd. Went to the Millennium Hotel, Boulder Co., for access to Boulder Creek, but were turned away by the police in the wake of an active shooter situation at the hotel. Found alternative parking, and, as soon as we got down along the creek, an American dipper:
Sun. afternoon, Feb. 20, with Kei Sochi and Hannah Floyd, intersection of 95th & Baseline in Lafayette, Boulder Co. Check this out: on the west side of the intersection a flock of about 40 Bohemian waxwings, and on the east side a little flock of cedar waxwings, including this one, hatched in 2022:
That's all I got. Just another winter weekend in Colorado, I suppose, but what's to complain about splendid human company and decent birding? I even got 60 eggs laid by Delaware hens and a year's worth of apple pie filling out of it, but that's a story for another day.
Ted Floyd
Lafayette, Boulder Co.
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