Hello, Birders.
As Norm Lewis has noted, yesterday, January 1st, was a great day to be birding
the South Platte drainage in the Denver area. Eight of us, participants in the
Denver Urban CBC, worked the South Platte River from 74th Street upstream for
several miles, plus the lowest stretches of Sand Creek, and adjacent reservoirs
and thickets. The birding, entirely on foot, was really good, from start to
finish. Our many highlights included:
1,712 Northern Shovelers, and that was surely an undercount.
83 Hooded Mergansers, most of them at the confluence of Sand Creek and the
South Platte.
6 Red-breasted Mergansers.
2 Ruddy Ducks.
1 Western Grebe.
15 Double-crested Cormorants.
13 Black-crowned Night-Herons upstream a short ways from the confluence of Sand
Creek and the South Platte.
14 Killdeer.
2 Wilson's Snipes.
1 stunning Prairie Falcon that flew right past us, in hot pursuit of a
Killdeer, as we were standing on the pedestrian bridge near I-76.
1 beautiful Northern Shrike.
6 Bushtits, working their way upstream (back home??) along the bank of the
South Platte.
2 Marsh Wrens.
1 likely flyover Eastern Bluebird. Heard-only, so we didn't count it.
3 widely scattered male Ruby-crowned Kinglets.
a phantasmagoric 148 American Pipits. We saw a flock of 70+ fly downstream, and
then it was followed by another flock of 60+. Plus, there were singles and
small flocks everywhere. Pipits were audible and visible almost constantly
during the day, and the species was nearly my first bird of the new year
(flyover in the parking lot, just as we were getting started).
1 Common Yellowthroat in a thicket on one of the sandbars on the west side of
the South Platte between I-76 and I-270.
1 Myrtle Warbler and 1 undifferentiated Yellow-rumped Warbler.
1 male Yellow-headed Blackbird.
at least 8, and possibly more, Rusty Blackbirds. We thought it was pretty
spiffy when we had a beautiful bird calling constantly (audio-recorded) right
under the I-76 bridge. Then Dick Schottler found us a full-on flock of 5,
upstream a ways and across the river. Then, toward the end of the day, we had
at least 8 (some of which were photo'd) in a wet, leafy thicket near the
confluence of Clear Creek and the South Platte River. We decided to bundle the
previous flocks of 1 and 5 into this group of 8.
For sure, it was one of my most memorable CBCs ever: the weather was clear,
cold, and brilliant; the birds were fabulous, the human companions even better.
Ted Floyd
tedfloy...@hotmail.com
Lafayette, Boulder County, Colorado
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