Phillips County Birding 9/15
William H Kaempfer
Birding east from Sterling this morning, I was in Haxtun by 7:30; but I think it was too early for insects to have warmed up, so I “buggered off”. Even the sewage ponds were uninteresting.
Frenchman’s Creek was good. On the west side right by the parking area there was a big active flock of spizellas—four species including Field Sparrow. I went on down to Lake Linfield on the Yuma-Phillips county line which does have a pool on the Yuma side (that thing must be pretty darn deep when it is up over the road!). There wasn’t much of note there but I had a Cooper’s Hawk and a Merlin driving down on CR 29.
The south side park in Holyoke was terrific. There were a couple hundred robins which were distracting, but I also had Townsend’s Warbler, Cassin’s Vireo, Ruby-crowned Kinglet , Wilson’s and Orange Crowned Warbler, Red and White-breasted Nuthatches and a Western Tanager. There must have been a tremendous bloom of something in the hackberry trees because that is where all the action was. I should have stayed put because there was zilch at the cemetery (those hackberrys were in mourning, I guess), the fishing hole was slow and by the time I made it to Ovid the day was pretty much over. Nothing special at Jumbo.
Bill Kaempfer
Boulder
