Mountain Finches and SW Loveland Lakes 2/6

I met up with Cheri Orwig and Cade Cropper to go to Ellen Wride's house to look for Rosy-Finches. When we  were just about to arrive at Ellen's house on the mountain north of Masonville we noticed a bunch of birds on the telephone wire. ROSY-FINCHES, sweet. All the birds that we could identify on the wire was Black Rosy-Finches (126), but they quickly dropped down to her house. As we arrived the large flock of about 80 birds took off. They quickly came back and we noticed a bunch of Gray-crowned Rosy-Finches (127) in with the Blacks. As we were watching I noticed a female Brown-capped Rosy-Finch sitting on the roof of her house, but it quickly dropped down to the deck and disappear. I then picked out a male Brown-capped and it to dropped out of sight and we never saw any Brown-capped again. Of the Rosy-Finches there were about 40 Blacks, 40 Gray-crowned, and 2 Brown-capped. A few other interesting birds present were all the Colorado subspecies of Dark-eyed Juncos and Cassin's Finches. On the way down the best bird we found was a Northern Shrike.

                                                      Black Rosy-Finch

                                                      Black Rosy-Finch

                                         'Hepburns' Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch

                                                 Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch

                                                        Cassin's Finch

                                                        Cassin's Finch

                                                     Dark-eyed Junco

                                                    Dark-eyed Junco

                                                       Dark-eyed Junco

                                                    Northern Shrike

After we got back to our cars we went our separate ways. I went straight towards Lon Hagler Reservoir where I found a bunch of gulls sleeping on the ice. Lots of Ring-billed Gulls and Herring Gulls, but a few others include a 'Nelson's Gull' which is a hybrid between a Herring and Glaucous, 1 2nd year Lesser Black-backed Gull, and 2 adult Thayer's Gull. I called Cade and he came to look.

                                     Nelson's Gull (Herring x Glaucous Hybrid)

We then went towards Hertha Reservoir and we found a few Horned Larks as we were pulling out. Then there was Dry Creek Reservoir where we found very little water with a small number of birds, but it was exciting. Here we had 3 Eared Grebes, 4 Bufflehead, and 1 Lesser Scaup with a number of Redheads and American Coots. The Eared Grebes were perhaps the same 3 we had on the Loveland CBC on Jan. 1 at Carter Lake, which is just up the hill from Dry Creek.

                                                        Horned Lark

                                                       Eared Grebe

                                                        Eared Grebe

We then went to Cattail Pond where there were still lots of birds with the best being the Trumpeter Swan and a male Gadwall. At Ryan's Gulch Reservoir the numbers keep going up, but I think a lot of these are birds moving over from Cattail Pond including most of the Ring-necked Ducks and Canvasback.