eBirding & iNatting The Arsenal on Day 1 of the much-ballyhooed Pattern Change

[Ted Floyd]

Hey, all.

Well, they're saying we're on the cusp of a long-awaited "pattern change," with 10+ days of stormy weather forecast for the Front Range metro region. We shall see... In any event, Pete Christiansen & Archer Silverman and I, not being ones to take any chances on missing some good birds & other biota, scrapped all our carefully laid plans for yesterday, Sat., Apr. 25, and instead spent a fair chunk of the day at Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, Adams Co.

As is often the case with Arsenal runs, the proceedings commenced with a Floyd-induced navigational error. Somehow I managed to punch in the coordinates not for Archer's house in Denver but, rather, for the historic Zion Baptist Church's food bank downtown. So Pete & I rerouted, snagged Archer, and made our way over to The Arsenal, arriving a coupla minutes before "sunrise." Which there wasn't much of, as it was overcast, humid, and chilly, with a lowering and louring cloud deck.

We started at the Havana Ponds complex, where a passerellid movement clearly was underway: 40+ gambelii white-crowned sparrows and smaller numbers of chipping, lark, vesper, & savannah sparrows, plus spotted towhees. Cool to witness a bit of "morning flight" of northbound waterbirds: greater yellowlegs, Franklin gull, white-faced ibis, & snowy egret. Also: 14 striking Wilson phalaropes, an apparent leucurus downy woodpecker, a loggerhead shrike perched on a mullein stalk, a few violent-green swallows, a peevish blue-gray gnatcatcher, & the first eight of the many Say phoebes that we would see at The Arsenal. On a side note, Pete was seriously channeling his inner Rollen Stewart, b. k. a. The Rainbow Man, known to all on COBirds who saw the 1979 MLB All Star Game, in which the late great Dave Parker was named MVP, Morganna smooched George Brett, and Stewart put in an unforgettable cameo:

Over at Gun Club Pond, we espied a Lincoln sparrow that scurried under the boardwalk . . . and didn't seem to come back out again. 😬 Also, a myrtle warbler, the first we would see at six stops total at The Arsenal yesterday. Walking back to the car along the Wildlife Drive, we saw two auduboni hermit thrushes in a large flock of chipping sparrows, plus two caterwauling great-tailed grackles in a flock of fisherman; also a bank swallow. Back at the Havana Ponds parking area, we decided to make a quick second run up to Little Havana, to see if anything had dropped in, and, yes, stuff had dropped in: a Wilson snipe, two solitary sandpipers, & a hulking marbled godwit. Two random musings (🤔): First, what would be that bird's 4LC if its name were marbled gadwit? Second, what would you call a mixed-up marbled godwit at a spoonerisms conference hosted by a well-known Colorado birder named Larry? Answer: a garbled Modesitt. But I digress. 

We repaired to Pete's specialty Subaru, with the seat warmers—even the rear seats!—on full blast (☺️), for a few glorious moments of delectable ectothermy, then carried on to Lower Derby Rez, which had a nice assortment of ducks, including lingering Aythyas like redhead, lesser scaup, & ring-necked duck; also red-breasted & common mergansers, plus loafing buffleheads & ruddy ducks. There was a decent smattering of shorebirds here, too, led by 7+ lesser yellowlegses & a semipalmated sandpiper. Also 8+ Brewer blackbirds gleaning detritus from the foamy shoreline & a rock wren, ch'PEEEing loudly and then obligingly bee-bopping on the riprap. (There's gotta be a poem there: rock wren, bee bop, rip rap. Quick! Where's Michèle Battiste, newly appointed Poet Laureate of Lafayette, Boulder Co., when ya need 'er? Does your Colorado city have a poet laureate? Hm?)

By the time we'd made it to Big Blue Stem, the overcast was so thick that it was like dusk. But there were cool birds to be found out there: a Brewer sparrow perhaps on territory (they are locally common nesters at Big Blue Stem), at least four more loggerhead shrikes, & two kingbirds—one a western & the other a locally uncommon Cassin—hunting semi-cooperatively. Or maybe it was just a case of tit-for-tat kleptoparasitism. On top of the overcast, there was the matter that I had unwittingly mucked up the manual focus–auto focus settings on my camera, which, appropriately enough are mfAF. I kid you not:

Anyhow, here are two of the Big Blue Stem bijoux, a not-quite-in-focus LOSH & an even-less-in-focus CAKI:

 

Felicitously, my "tiger beetle camera" was not thus affected. Infelicitously, there was a nary a tiger beetle to be seen anywhere at The Arsenal yesterday, what with the cloud cover and all. However, we got more than satisfactory looks at an adorable wolf spider, family Lycosidae, perhaps Alopecosa kochi, channeling its inner ewok; & a ferocious desert stink beetle, in the tenebrionid genus Eleodes, the red-backed darkling beetle, E. suturalis:

 

This is how it's done, per Pete:

Over at nearby Upper Derby woods, we picked up, well, some woodland birds: 13 blue jays, 3 nelsoni white-breasted nuthatches, & a sweetly singing black-capped chickadee. And there was drama overhead, with more white-faced ibides (one ibis, two ibi, three or more ibides, it's Greek, trust me 🤓) on apparent VisMig & a skyful of swallows (we saw all six species of the Front Range regulars at The Arsenal yesterday) being worked over by a high-flying Cooper hawk.

The don't-get-out-of-your-car part of the Wildlife Drive produced lots more vesper sparrows, both small migrant flocks and songsters on territory, as well as an adult bald eagle on a titanic nest. And a quick detour over to the base of Rattlesnake Hill got us our FOY burrowing owl, a distant adult perched primly atop a bison pie.

Swinging down to Upper Ladora Rez, we flushed a sharply chipping palm warbler, an Arsenal mega, from the weeds; the bird kept going, northwestward, perhaps to Greenlee Wildlife Preserve, perhaps to Alberta. Also a mixed-species flock of western, eared, & pied-billed grebes. We wound up our time at The Arsenal down at Mary's & the Discovery Trail, where migrating gambelii white-crowned sparrows were in officially ridiculous abundance.

And we made a miscalculation. We thought we'd recorded "only" 84 bird species, so Pete deftly guided us to the HOSP-filled parking lot of Love Psychic, which, critically, is in Adams Co., not Denver Co., so "close enough," we reckoned. See, we'd thought those house sparrows were a celebratory #85, a nice "round" number, and a semiprime, but, actually, we'd miscounted—and already'd gotten 85 species at The Arsenal proper. In due course, we got Archer back home, where his mom notified Pete & me that it was Archer's birthday and he's therefore got a valid CO learner's permit, EVERYBODY SAVE YOURSELVES, GET OFF THE LAWNS & SIDEWALKS NOW, and we headed back up to Lafayette, where I plied Kei with Pete's legendary lemon squares. And...The day wasn't over. Kei drove me right back down to Archer's Denver neighborhood, where I was a guest at a hipster Millennial mega blowout death party. The (actually quite innocent) pizza-fueled rave was outdoors, and I was enchanted there by two nest-building American bushtits. Also, oddly, the day's first Eurasian collared-doves. Meanwhile, Andrew—whom I'm sure some of you remember and who is in Korea these days—WhatsApp'd me (because if there's a "sociable," even on the other side of the world, Andrew will find his way to it...), and I could hear real-time brown-eared bulbuls & Asian tits (and oh crap, I wish I hadn't googled that bird's name to make sure I got it right 😳) during the call, but I declined to add those to the day's species list. Eventually, it was back to Lafayette, again, and a pair of duetting great horned owls, #89, a full-on prime, and a satisfying end to the long day.

Ted Floyd
Lafayette, Boulder Co.