Hey all - I went to Walden Ponds this morning to see if I could relocate some birds that I saw out there recently. I was not able to find them, unfortunately (the Flycatcher and Mockingbird/Shrike). I had a nice walk anyway, saw a few deer along with the usual birdy suspects. There were a bunch of Snowy Egrets on Cottonwood Marsh when I arrived, so when I finally made my way around to Bass Pond and saw another one, I didn't think much of it. While I was examining it, however, it had some things that made me think that it was not another Snowy. The legs and feet were a greenish color, and the bill was not as dark as a Snow's bill should have been. I watched it for a little while until some people with a dog came along and it flew off. Shortly thereafter, I stopped to talk to another birder, and she mentioned that she and several other people had seen a juvenile Little Blue Heron at Walden within the last week or so. It took me a minute to make the connection, but I was fairly certain that the bird I had seen would fit that description. I didn't see exactly where the bird had flown off, so I decided against traipsing around the entire property again in search of one bird. When I got home, I looked at recent eBird postings from Walden, and as luck would have it, Willem Van Vliet was out there yesterday, and took a picture of what he identified as a Great Egret. You can see his picture on his eBird posting from yesterday here: WvV's eBird list from August 15th <http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S38665112>.
Take a look and see what you think, is this a Little Blue Heron, or a Great Egret? I am leaning towards LBHE based on what I saw (assuming that this is the same bird). If it is indeed a LBHE, I probably should have made a second trip around, but it was getting past time for lunch, and my feet were tired. Other birds of interest were a group of seven Northern Shovelers, three Cinnamon Teal (larger beaks than Blue-Winged), and five Semipalmated Sandpipers. The Ospreys on the back pond are about ready to leave the nest, the adults were pretty busy bringing fish to feed the young ones. Good birding - Jeff Parks Boulder -- 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/742e4053-3664-4873-8a69-efdbdff78d63%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
