edm@verdix.com (Ed Matthews) (03/11/91)
I'm going to be heading to Denver/Boulder this weekend, March 16 and 17, and am going to be searching for Colorado specialties, esp. White-Tailed Ptarmigan. This will be my first birding opportunity west of the Mississippi River, so I'm fairly confident of getting many lifers. I have both the Lane's Guide and the Birding Guide to the Denver-Boulder Region (by Folzenlogen), thanks to ABA sales, and both of these make little mention of snow conditions and roads being open or closed. Can anyone fill me in on the likely conditions this coming weekend? Also, can anyone make a recommendation where to find American Dippers this time of year? I remember fondly the hours I spent sitting by a creek in Killarney, Ireland watching their European counterparts. I'll have Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday to bird: any local birders want to get cold with me? -- Ed Matthews edm@verdix.com Verdix Corporation Headquarters (703) 378-7600 Chantilly, Virginia
wwf@oz.plymouth.edu (Dr. Wavell Fogleman) (03/13/91)
Dippers, Ptarmigan Don't have any experience with CO birding this early in year; however, I've always had good luck with finding Dipper along Bear [?] Creek along the road to Evergreen [mentioned in Lane, I believe]. The only place I've found WT Ptarmigan has been on Trail Ridge Road and it doesn't get fully plowed until June! Good luck on getting reply from locals.
edm@verdix.com (Ed Matthews) (03/21/91)
In article <1991Mar13.135813.16345@oz.plymouth.edu> wwf@oz.plymouth.edu (Dr. Wavell Fogleman) writes: >Dippers, Ptarmigan > >Don't have any experience with CO birding this early in year; however, >I've always had good luck with finding Dipper along Bear [?] Creek along >the road to Evergreen [mentioned in Lane, I believe]. The only place I've >found WT Ptarmigan has been on Trail Ridge Road and it doesn't get fully >plowed until June! Good luck on getting reply from locals. Only one response from a local. Are there any readers out there in the Denver/Boulder region? I thought surely there must be. Anyway, my trip report: As you probably know from my request last week for information about the Denver area, I did some birding there over the weekend. I have never really had the opportunity to bird the western US before, so I was expecting a fair number of lifers; I got a few. I had three birds on the brain when I went out there: White-Tailed Ptarmigan, American Dipper, and Canyon Wren. I got the dipper and the wren, and struck out on the Ptarmigan and most of the alpine species. I was well rewarded by my search with the lovely weather (sunny and 40-45 degrees F at 11,000 feet and above) and the exquisite views of the mountains with their fresh coats of new snow. My flight from DC was delayed by about three hours (first an engine had to be repaired, then the ATC system went down, and then Stapleton was fogged in) so I had to abandon my plans for Saturday afternoon. I decided to do Red Rocks Park and search for Canyon Wren and then move up Bear Creek looking for dippers and incidental birds until it got dark. I pretty well struck out at Red Rocks (but then it was after 3 PM), though I did pick up two variations on NORTHERN JUNCO that I have not seen before: Oregon Junco and Pink-Sided Junco. I scanned the rocks for Canyon Wren and Rosy Finch with no success. I tracked one bird for several minutes through some really thorny scrub, only to find that it was an AMERICAN ROBIN. I was hoping for a quail or at least a Towhee. Don't you hate it when that happens! :) Who can tell me what bird builds the teardrop shaped, hanging, woven nests in the cottonwood trees at Red Rocks? Also, is it the BLACK-BILLED MAGPIES that build the huge agglomerations of sticks and twigs that look more like squirrel nests in lowland cottonwoods? Heading up Bear Creek, I followed my Lane's Guide to Morrison Park to see the dipper nest under the bridge and look for the little guys. Sure enough, the nest was there as advertised (a rare coincidence in my experience). Walking down the stream on the rock wall, I heard the AMERICAN DIPPER coming long before I saw it rocket past me at some phenomenal rate of speed, following the creek bed at about a foot off the water. It quickly passed out of view and I didn't bother to chase it down as the light was quickly fading and I wanted to move on. I moved on to O'Fallon Park and pulled in by the picnic tables alongside the creek, where, when I glanced up, a pair of Dippers were doing what Dippers do best: dipping. I watched this pair and several others along this stretch of creek for some minutes. I have spent many hours studying their European counterparts and conclude that: + American Dippers are much more skittish than European Dippers. + European Dippers, especially the form that occurs in Ireland, is a much more handsome bird with the chocolate brown and white. + American Dippers are both easier and harder to find: because they are so easy to flush and so vocal, it is not hard to get one to move so you can see it. Once it lands, however, it is pretty well camouflaged. European Dippers hold their ground more and don't flush so readily, but are easier to spot in the water because of the white breast. I bushwhacked my way up one of the mountainsides, picking up a TOWNSEND'S SOLITAIRE on the way up. Lured by another, I climbed a particularly steep slope that had been selectively logged in the past ten years, so that it had a lot of open space between trees. This was just a few minutes before sunset and I heard a lot of birds, including some that I didn't recognize but which were clearly nuthatches, so I sat down on a stump and had a field day. Within about two minutes I saw: BLACK CAPPED CHICKADEE, MOUNTAIN CHICKADEE, PINE SISKIN, PYGMY NUTHATCH, RED-BREASTED NUTHATCH, and HAIRY WOODPECKER. The Mountain Chickadee and Pygmy Nuthatch were lifers for me and these were the most common birds there. A few of the birds approached to within about three feet from where I was sitting. It really started to get cold after the sun went down, so I hiked back out to the car and called it a day. Or so I thought at the time, but as I passed Red Rocks again, I couldn't resist going back in and looking for a Canyon Wren. There was more light here than up higher. I went up the canyon that Lane's claims is one of the best spots in the country to see Canyon Wren and sat down to wait for the little guys. I heard what could have been a pair and saw and heard a EUROPEAN STARLING imitating a radio, complete with static and all those funny noises you hear on late night AM radio -- amazing! I didn't see the wrens, but did have a lovely serenade by a pair of coyotes at the bottom of the canyon. Sitting up in a canyon in the twilight, listening to that mournful wail and subsequent yipping was really a lot of fun. Sunday I went back by Red Rocks on my way out I-70 to the high mountains to find that Canyon Wren (I am persistent :). I went back to the same canyon with the same results, so I left there and went up to the tunnel by the amphitheater and as I was pulling off to the side of the road, I saw a pair of wrens, which quickly darted back into a hole. I sat on the opposite side of the road and waited, just to make sure of the ID and it wasn't two minutes before they came flitting back out onto the rock face. The white/buff throat patch showed them to be CANYON WRENS. Then it was on to Georgetown and several inches of fresh snow. The trip up to Guanella Pass in the rental car was tricky, but uneventful. The entire twelve miles up to Guanella Pass, I saw only one bird, a jay of some variety, but I was pretty much concentrating on the road. The scenery was incredible as I wound up through tall spruce (Englemann's I think, but I am no expert at trees that are not indigenous to the Eastern Seaboard) with snow all over them like some Bavarian Winterland scene. There seemed to be several interesting places that I would have liked to have birded, but there were no places to park for all the snow. Up top at the pass above the treeline, I explored the tundra as best I could looking for White-Tailed Ptarmigan, but I was totally unprepared for the snow. Had I been thinking (easy to say in retrospect) I would have brought skis or snowshoes, but as it was, I waded about until I exhausted myself, not too long in knee-to-waist deep snow at altitude. I was bummed about not seeing any Ptarmigan or any Rosy Finches. From there, I went back down to Georgetown and searched every feeder in town for Rosy Finches, but no feeder had any food in it. Back down I-70 towards Denver, I cut off on CO 103 to see Mt Evans. Way up high on 103 looking basically northward is an exquisite sight: all the high peaks drenched in fresh snow. The weather was delightful, sunny, crystal clear, and warm (30's to 50's depending on altitude). I was looking for Clark's Nutcrackers and Gray Jays, but had no success. I did manage to see a pair of RED CROSSBILLS with a lot of patience. They were singing very loudly in the firs, but only occasionally would they come out where I could see them and then only for a split second. Speaking of red finches, I saw plenty of CASSIN'S FINCHES and HOUSE FINCHES, but no Purple Finches. I find all three males to be generally easy to distinguish (based on hours of study at my feeders), but have more trouble with the females. The Cassin's is a lifer for me. After my business concluded, I had Tuesday morning to explore before heading to the airport and since my hotel was right at Cherry Creek Reservoir, I took advantage of that. There was about zero waterfowl on the lake. Most common were RING-BILLED GULLS, followed by CANADA GEESE and MALLARDS. Back in the swamps were a very few REDHEADS. No herons, no snipe, no nothing interesting. I saw one diver, a likely Common Goldeneye, but it was too far away for ID. (For you Brits, that's a diving duck, not what we call a Loon!) I have never seen so many NORTHERN HARRIERS in one location before nor ones that would come so close to me. I must have seen 15 and several flew right over my head at about twenty feet off the ground. I saw the Red-Shafted form of the NORTHERN FLICKER, a first for me. I thought they would be extraordinarily difficult to positively ID, but several obligingly flew with wings into the sun so that only a blind person would miss the pink tinge on the underwings. A great treat for me was seeing my first non-captive Prairie Dogs in the Praire Dog town on the south side of the lake. They were great fun, scampering about and barking at me. After a few minutes, I heard a great shriek and they all beat it for their burrows. I didn't know what kind of predator I was looking for, but scanning all about with my binocs, I saw a big lump on the ground that didn't fit in with the background and wasn't in its burrow. Then I saw it flash its wings -- a very large FERRUGINOUS HAWK, who had missed its prey (also a lifer). I also had the pleasure to get one last lifer and my favorite bird of the whole trip, the WESTERN MEADOWLARK. I have seen several of the Eastern variety, but only from the windows of speeding cars. It was a real pleasure to sit on the hood of the car and watch the larks carrying on fifteen feet from me, throwing their heads back, opening their beaks, and letting go with a lovely, enchanting song. In closing, I wanted to mention that I mostly used the A Birder's Guide to Colorado in the Lane's Series and found it to be quite good. I also had a copy of Birding Guide to the Denver-Boulder Region which is OK, but not high on my list of must-have guides. More guides should concentrate on trips as opposed to specific sites, especially for the benefit of out-of-towners who don't necessarily know or understand the geographical relationship of one site to the next and how to best make use of their time. -- Ed Matthews edm@verdix.com Verdix Corporation Headquarters (703) 378-7600 Chantilly, Virginia