I joined John Vanderpoel and a Boulder Bird Club field trip today for eastern Boulder and southwestern Weld Counties. Starting from the Niwot Park-N-Ride we went north to Pella Crossing which hosted lots of waterfowl, including many American Wigeon and Canvasbacks. Next stop was McIntosh Reservoir where the large gull (4 sp.)/merganser (3 sp.)/grebe (4 sp.) and goldeneye (alas only 1 sp.) flock continues. Singled out birds included many Bonaparte's Gulls and a flyover Sharp-shinned Hawk.
On to Union where we had two Black-bellied Plovers in the NW corner as well as single Greater White-fronted and Ross's Geese in the huge, mainly Cackling Goose flock along the north shore. We continues east to some of the ponds around St. Vrain State Park (without actually entering the park). Here we had a Say's Phoebe near the St. Vrain River east of I-25, and a Snow Goose in the pond north of the gravel plant. At this point things started to slow down as we had little on the south shore of Union, nothing but hunters at Panama Reservoir and little to nothing at Thomas Res. or in the Anthem area. We continued on to LUNA Reservoir which was liberally covered with distant ducks and gulls. Returning to Boulder, we next stopped at Baseline Reservoir where we got to study side by side, first cycle Thayer's and Herring Gulls. Our departure was happily delayed by the arrival of a family of five Tundra Swans (2A-3J). Also of interest was a possible hybrid Common-Red Breasted Merganser female. We fought traffic and construction up to Legion Park overlooking Valmont where we had our first and only loon of the day-a Common. Finally we stopped at Dodd Reservoir for a truly memorable end to the day as it had 7,000 Cackling Geese, 500 Canada Geese, 7 Snow Geese (one blue), two Greater White-fronted Geese and a Snow Goose. A couple awe inspiring takeoffs were a treat. Bill Kaempfer Boulder -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To post to this group, send email to cobirds@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to cobirds+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
