On my lunch break I again birded Timnath Reservoir. While scanning the reservoir I noticed there was total turnover since the last time I was there. Looking through the large numbers of Cackling Geese and small numbers of Canada Geese I found 5 Snow Geese, 1 Ross's Goose, and 1 Greater White-fronted Goose. I found 4 Double-crested Cormorants (144) standing in the trees close to the large numbers of empty cormorant nests. A few other birds of interest that I saw in the area was 1 female Barrow's Goldeneye, 5 male Red-breasted Mergansers, and 1 Tree Swallow.
After work I went to Kechter Pit. This was another hot spot today. I saw the best bird just as I got back in my car to leave and I saw a sparrow fly by. This bird turned out to be a Vesper Sparrow (145). It is the earliest Vesper Sparrow I have ever seen in Colorado and according to ebird it is the earliest ever observed in Larimer County.
I then was on my way to meet Cade Cropper at Horseshoe Lake and on the way I made a quick stop at Duck Lake. There I found yet another Trumpeter Swan. There were just less than a hundred ducks on the lake, but I was still amazed by the number of Canvasback as they totaled almost half of the ducks on the lake as there was 42 present. As I met up with Cade we checked the lakes of the area: Horseshoe, Donath, and Boyd Lakes. The most interesting bird was an adult Lesser Black-backed Gull in the 300ish gulls we could identify. We then found at least twice as many gulls on the south side of the reservoir, but they were way to far away to get any field marks on any of the birds. I am thinking this is another spot where they roost as there haven't been nearly as many birds showing up at the Lake Loveland roost as was seen here. Our last stop was the roost at Lake Loveland and the only interesting gull was a Thayer's Gull.
Cade informed me that he saw the Western -like- Gull again yesterday afternoon at Lake Loveland and all the field marks he saw fits perfect for Western Gull.
No comments:
Post a Comment