Roger Linfield and I spent all day on Saturday touring Phillips County, Colorado. Waterfowl was abundant at the large playa that straddles the Phillips/Yuma county line on Road 2, between roads 29 and 31. Northern Pintails and "white" Geese were the most abundant of a good mix of waterfowl. I estimated that there were 800 (very approximate number) Pintail and an equal number of white geese. The great majority of the white geese were ROSS'S Geese, maybe 600 of them and 200 Snows, including the usual mix of "blue" (dark morph) Snows. Very unusual mix for such a large number of geese. The highlight of the trip for me was finding a dark morph Ross's Goose, a very uncommon morph and one I have been searching for since 1974. I recall the day when Joe Himmel phoned me twenty years ago to tell me that in Greeley he had seen a dark morph Ross's Goose, after looking for one for decades, so I then realized how rare they are. Getting back to the waterfowl report, there were 12 species of ducks, in descending order of abundance- Pintail, as mentioned, Redhead, Mallard, Green-winged Teal, Gadwall, American Wigeon, Canvasback, RIng-necked Duck, Lesser Scaup, Bufflehead, Common Goldeneye (county bird for me - the only one), and one of our TARGET birds - Common Merganser. Unfortunately for us county listers, the merganser was in the deeper part of the playa, on the Yuma county side. Four species of geese were Ross, Snow, Canada and Cackling. No White-fronted Geese.
Our main effort out there was looking for Mountain Bluebird, and despite extensive searching in every habitat, we saw not one. The distribution of this bird seems to be farther south of Phillips County and west from there to the front range. We thought that the date was good for this bluebird, and learned that they were prevalent a little farther south, but no dice in PhilCo. Other target birds -Golden Eagle, Sandhill Crane, which would have been county birds for either or both of us, were not found. Joe Roller, Denver -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds". 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 this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cobirds?hl=en?hl=en Visit the CFO Website at: www.cfo-link.org
