Clear Creek

Saturday's walk wasn't all goofy Mallards. I had headed over, hoping to add a couple more species to my list for the year. After some of the goodies found in the area last year I thought it would be a good place to start. My plan was to check to the west, where Rusty Blackbirds had been seen last year, and then turn back to check the ponds to the east of I70. It didn't take long for me to hear, and then see a pair of Killdeer.

But there was another species that I had seen in the same spot before, and was hoping to relocate last weekend. I find it entertaining that the last post on this bird was from the same spot, posted exactly one year ago. I wonder if the bird was thinking - oh boy there is that human watching me hunt with that big eye looking thing again!


As the number of pictures and my previous posts can attest, I get a huge kick out of American Dippers.


They make their living in rushing water that would push us downstream with ease. As my cloudy day shots can attest, they are well suited to blending with rock and water. But, what could otherwise be an easily overlooked bird is actually fascinating to watch. Not only do they swim in the torrent, they also emerge and submerge body parts in all sorts of comical ways!


Not only that, but when out of the water they are constantly bobbing up and down on their legs. They totally remind me of old Disney cartoon characters dancing.

Dippers also seem to do a lot more wing stretches. Not sure if it is more because they get worked under water more, or if it is just so cold in there that they try to warm them up every chance they get!


Their activity makes them really fun to watch, but as the temps warm up and trees leaf out they get harder and harder to watch or photograph. This spot is a bit unusual because the bird is basically out in suburbia. They are normally associated with mountain streams, but this one is a good seven miles from the foothills.


I really like that this bird has made itself such a convenient stretch of creek for its territory, hopefully it won't be another year before I get to watch again.


Maybe the reason it was stretching above was because this species is always mixing eating and swimming - didn't its momma ever tell it to wait thirty minutes?

The mostly-cloudy skies didn't lend themselves to great photos, so I just kept walking west rather than turning back to the ponds.


I finished my walk passing the miles of Coors Brewing campus before reaching Golden. Any brewery that has their own working yard locomotive to move around train cards of supplies has my respect!



With that, Mr. Ring-necked Duck says farewell. The beginning of this week featured freezing rain, sleet, light snow and fog - so photography has been minimal. Hopefully the beautiful if cool evening last night will be a sign of things to come.

A Favorite - on Display in Clear Creek

There were more than just Rusty Blackbirds along Clear Creek. Walking along, I spotted one of my favorite birds to watch in action. The American Dipper, or as it was formerly known, Water Ouzel, is the rock star of fast moving water. On a cloudy day the Dipper looks like a gray spot on otherwise gray water. For that reason I usually find them as they call, or as an unconfirmed dark movement along a creek bed. This leads to far too many frustrating encounters, but then I see one like this, that was just hanging out in the middle of the stream. It gave me a great opportunity to get a closer look at this cool bird, without it constantly diving underwater.

Check out these heavy duty white eyelids! They are so unexpected when they appear 'in a blink' on this otherwise drab bird. Perhaps this is a bit of camoflauge specific to its habitat. I guess that the blinking appearance of white may help to mimic the changing nature of white water and keep the bird from appearing to static to potential predators. I couldn't find anything online to support that idea, but I didn't find any other explanation either.

Static, is not a word I would use to describe this bobbing and bouncing bit of bird. Watching it move across it's narrow wooden bridge was great light-hearted avian entertainment. So often when observing wildlife, the most captivating moments are tied to life, death, rivalry and love - the heavy stuff of existence. With the Dipper though, most of those actions are hidden from our eyes beneath the surface of fast moving water, or hidden away behind brush or falling water. So with this species, at least as I have observed it, life is limited to moving from place to place, and not in a direct point to point method either. It dips and bounces and it moves, reminding us that the journey can be the destination, and that at least in appearance getting there is just one big happy dance.

The Entertainer

Admittedly I am no expert birder. Far from it, I am a newbie, who makes up for a lack of knowledge and experience with enthusiasm and technology. I am approximately 100 days in to listing the birds I have been able to identify. For a large part the birds I have found have either been ones that I had already known of, or ones that others have notified me of, either directly, or through email.
There has been one bird that I had not been familiar with at all until I began to educate myself about species. The bird is the American Dipper, and I first read of it in the Brdpics Archives. I have been intrigued since I first read about the songbird that "flies" underwater in fast moving mountain streams. How cool did that sound. Since I read about it I have had limited opportunities to even look for the bird, but it has remained in the back of my mind as something I just had to see for myself.

So this afternoon I headed to Boulder Canyon to see if I could find any Dippers. I walked the twenty or so feet to the creek and began to look....not really sure exactly what I was supposed to see. I began to slowly work my way downstream, and not only did I not see a Dipper, I didn't see any birds.

Sometimes coming straight from work I find that I am not in tune with my environment, so I pulled off to the side and stopped looking. I just soaked in the sounds of the creek, and the beautiful afternoon. After a minute or two I began to "pish" the creek to see if there were any birds on the far bank. Immediately I got a response, and scanned to find it. There right below my nose was my target, the American Dipper.






This is one of the most cool birds to watch that I have ever seen. It works the fast moving water by standing, and get this... dipping its head below the water.





Then it would swim, jump, walk and fly its way between various rocks and underwater perches. So very cool to see live. Seeing one I thought I was locked in and would have nothing but birds from there on, but it was not to be. After starting with a lifer in the first ten minutes I saw two Rock Pigeons and a single Raven high overhead. All the same, this afternoon will be memorable for a long time to come, a day when spring was in the air and an expectation was far exceeded.
To top it all off, I swung by Baseline Reservoir on the way home to soak up as much of the lengthening daylight as I could. It was a beautiful evening, and two Common Goldeneye were the only creatures visible on the calm lake surface.


2009 Count: 60

Lifetime: 90