Okay, that sounds like the beginning of a really lame April Fools joke, but, actually, it's a true story. Here goes...
Yesterday, Friday, March 31, Andrew Floyd and I had an errand to run, and we just happened to be in the vicinity of Prince Lake No. 2, eastern Boulder County, where we saw a drive-by *sage thrasher <http://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/52946471>.* It was raining, and I was lazy, so we just snapped a few photos from the car. I sort of brought the car to a stop. Then, this Saturday morning, Apr. 1, Hannah Floyd and I had an errand to run in the exact same vicinity of eastern Boulder County, so we stopped by--you guessed it--Prince Lake No. 2, where we saw a drive-by *sandhill crane <http://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/53036331>.* Same deal as the day before: rainy, lazy, sort of stopped the car, snapped a few photos from the car, and continued on our way. Now here's where the story gets weird. When I went to eBird the 3/31 sage thrasher, the smart search ("S"..."A"...) took me to s-a-n-d-h-i-l-l, but not to s-a-g-e, because sage thrasher trips the Boulder County filter in March, but sandhill crane does not. As to the 4/1, sandhill crane, it was déja vu all over again: The eBird smart search ("S"..."A"...) returned s-a-g-e, but not s-a-n-d-h-i-l-l, because sandhill crane trips the Boulder County filter in April, but sage thrasher does not. Is that freaky or what? And it reprises a recent thread at the CFO Facebook site, wherein (certain) folks were grousing about the (allegedly) too-tight filters for Colorado. I, for one, consider the Colorado eBird filters to be set at just the right tension, especially along the well-birded I-25 corridor. And, well, you have to draw boundaries somewhere (3/31 for *SA*ge thrasher, 4/1 for *SA*ndhill crane, etc.), and I coincidentally got burned twice: Same place, same car, same situation, *SA*me first two letters. Even Bill Kaempfer couldn't have devised such a scheme. Over at the nearby Greenlee Preserve–Waneka Lake–Thomas Open Space–Hecla Pond ecological complex, eastern Boulder County, things were decently birdy this dreary Saturday morning, Apr. 1: among 40 species, a pair of *wood ducks,* a drake *hooded merganser,* molting *horned grebes,* a hybrid *northern flicker,* a *prairie merlin,* *American bushtit *pairs, a singing *Rubicon kinglet,* a latish *dark-eyed junco,* *white-crowned sparrows* on the move, a *spotted towhee* that couldn't quite commit to singing a full song, and *common grackles* out the wazoo. Photos, audio, and eBird checklist here: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S35609657 Ted Floyd Lafayette, Boulder County e -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/8d3cc84f-a3b0-48aa-963a-64beddd15835%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
