Our first stop was a little pond on Wilson Ave just south of the Big Thompson River. On the CBC a Gadwall was seen there and the day before that there was a Blue-winged Teal. Our stop had lots of birds, but nothing new for me. The best bird was a male Hooded Merganser, which is always a nice sight to see.
Then we decided to try for gulls coming into Lake Loveland. Lots and lots of geese was here first thing in the morning and we were able to find a Branta x Chen Hybrid and an adult Snow Goose. Then some of the gulls started showing up. The only gulls of interest that we were able to find however was 2 Thayer's Gulls and a Lesser Black-backed Gull.
Then up to Grandview Cemetery we went. On the way we saw a Prairie Falcon flying between Loveland and Fort Collins. We got there just in time to meet up with Cade. He said he forgot about a meeting he has to go to, but pointed out the tree the sapsucker has been in. He said he has usually been seeing the bird at right around 9:00 in the morning. So, at 8:30 we checked the tree. No bird. Since Grandview is a very birdy area we can walk around for 30 minutes until we check again. At first it was slow. Then we found a nice sized flock with mostly American Robins and European Starling, but it also had 1 Downy Woodpecker and 2 Red-breasted Nuthatches. Then at the south-east side of the cemetery we found a flock of juncos. Then we started to find other birds. Several Red-breasted Nuthatches, oh, here is a Black-capped Chickadee, there is a Mountain Chickadee, and a Brown Creeper. Wait, I hear a flock of Pine Siskins flying in, there they landed. Nothing but siskins, then they flew, WAIT, that sounded good for a Common Redpoll in that flock. There they landed in those trees. Wow, what is that on the back side of the tree, yes, that is a Common Redpoll. We then walked back to the sapsucker tree. Nothing that I can see, but it does sound like a very faint sound of something tapping. I then walked to the other side of the tree. I think there is movement up towards the top. Yes, I can see the back side of the head appearing then disappearing while it is tapping. We then got good looks at it and some identifiable photos, then watched it as it flew into the cemetery.
We made a quick stop by Skyler Bol's neighborhood looking for the Bullock's Oriole. Despite a large flock of American Robins with a few other species mixed in we were not able to find the oriole.
On our way back down to Lake Loveland we had a Mourning Dove fly in front of us. At Lake Loveland we came across a bunch of firefighters practicing being on the ice and getting people out of the water, which made for the lake to have few birds around. While looking through the few geese there I came across a Greater White-fronted Goose (a different bird than Nick Komar had here on Jan. 1) and also found a Pied-billed Grebe.
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