CU Campus Northwest Pond

The Sun is finally shining again in Colorado! To celebrate I headed up to the CU campus in Boulder on lunch to see if I could locate an American Redstart that had been reported there earlier in the day.

Instead it was a bunch of common birds, in a nice environment. Unfortunately I showed up just as the landscape crews were mowing, so that may have sent anything passing through to deeper cover, but at any rate there were some nice looks at familiar species. The Black-Capped Chickadee is one example. They are so familiar on bare snowy branches that seeing one surrounded by sun-drenched leaves almost seems wrong.

The House Wren was also cooperative in its perch. It was singing, and I approached it from the footbridge. I was able to move just under it and to the side of a building to get shots from the front - but at that point the light was behind the bird.

This brilliantly colored House Finch was working its way along the ivy covered walls. Even when seen daily their colors can be impressive in the right setting.