On Saturday, October 14, I woke early and went owling at Blackmer Lake in Cherry Hills Village (Arapahoe). Through the darkness, I could see and hear that the lake was packed with Canada Geese, mallards, and some other duck that made a high pitched whine, though I don't think it was the high pitched whine of a Wood Duck. I worked on my screech owl call as I walked, getting a whole lot of nothing back at me most of the morning. Nearer to sunrise, though, I heard a Great Horned and, soon after, a whinnying screech.
I hung around the area until about 8:30, walking north on the High Line toward Quincy Ave. It was very birdy where the canal meets the road. A hundred or so robin passed over around sunrise, the three nuthatches foraged and called, a Hermit Thrush, juncos, White-crowned Sparrows, and towhees did their things in the brush. Closer to the lake, a series of small conifers -- Ponderosa Pines, maybe -- had another dozen or so Pygmy Nuthatches -- the most I've had in a west Arapahoe flock -- foraging alongside Black-capped Chickadees and a flock of Bushtits. But by the time I got back to the lake, it was empty. The geese had moved to the playing fields; all were Canadas, I think. The ducks seemed to have gone somewhere else. Later that day, I took a cold, short walk through the wind at Willow Spring Open Space in Centennial. A half-dozen Mountain Bluebirds -- perhaps the same half dozen from the week prior -- worked the scrubby grasses and weeds on the southern side of the dam. On Sunday (10/15), my wife, dog, and I took a walk a bit before sunset along the Big Dry Creek Trail near Cherry Knolls Park in Centennial. I heard another Pygmy Nuthatch and we got to check out an enormous & menacing Great Horned perched above the creek. Even later on Sunday, I learned, through eBird, that a Steller's Jay had been seen in the neighborhood around deKoevend Park on Saturday. This is a bird I badly want for my local list (a 3 mile circle, centered near deKoevend). Having missed a rare enough opportunity to get one so close to my home stung enough to lead me to take a brief AM walk at deKoevend this morning (10/16) with my dog. I didn't bring my binoculars, assuming that I could spot a Steller's without them and knowing that the binoculars usually cause me to turn a mile walk into an hour long, stand-around-and-stare-at-the-underbrush-while-the-dog-pulls-on-his-leash affair. Without the binoculars, I managed a screech. And I'll spare you the story of how I thought a Song Sparrow could have been, just might have been, maybe was a Fox Sparrow. (It wasn't.) An oddity was a group of "diving" mallards. I got some video of them facing the current of the High Line Canal (which is running fairly high) and dropping entirely under the water before reemerging a few feet later. But no Steller's...bummer. Back at home, I kept my feeder stocked with peanuts, mealworms, and sunflower seeds today. The pecking order on the platform feeder seems to be magpies, the lone visiting scrub jay, then Blue Jays. Collared Doves seem to be able to hold their own with the jays. Once the peanuts are gone, the House Finches, Red-breasted Nuthatches, and Black-capped Chickadees move in. Two Lesser Goldfinches, the first I've seen visiting my feeders rather than my flower garden, swung by. Then this one, which I spotted from my kitchen window, as I cooked dinner. <https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-D8-Cqs6U3fI/WeVyyemzicI/AAAAAAAANt8/lx_zOyc9ubQsX1HZvbPIylXC7G9mhR4UACLcBGAs/s1600/DSC_0175%2B%2BStellers.jpg> - Jared Del Rosso Centennial, CO -- 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 cobirds+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to cobirds@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/dc1784d5-f6f9-424c-b5a6-fcac702873f0%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
