More Fall Sparrows

White-crowned Sparrow

I have never been one for definitives. Ask me what my favorite food is, and I can give you a list; music, depends on the mood; movie, yeah right; book - even worse. So naturally I am not one to play favorites in nature, but even so I have a tough time passing on fall as a favorite time of year. Don't get me wrong, winter spring and summer all have their strengths, but I think it is the variety of fall that really captures my interest. The colors and the weather are constantly changing. An early frost may be followed by a week in the 90's, and by the end of fall, (a week before the Christmas Holidays), winter will have fully arrived, or in Colorado it will have at least made and appearance.

Lincoln's Sparrow

For now, around here colors are achieving their full tones, and birds have been moving through steadily. Fall also seems to be a season when my time is pre-allocated, mainly by football games and old friends returning to watch football games. So birding takes a bit of a hit, but it just makes those times when I can get out that much more memorable.

White-crowned Sparrow

The visit I had to the Walden & Sawhill Ponds complex in Boulder was certainly one of those. On a walk there with a roommate and dog I saw these sparrows and a good number of other species as well. Another post to follow with a pair of new species for the blog...

RMNP Trail Ridge Road Birds - August 6th

juvenile Red-tail Hawk

Just a fast recap of a sample of the birds I saw a couple of weeks back when I drove over Rocky Mountain National Park's Trail Ridge Road on my way to western Colorado. After the colorful, crisp birds I saw on the last day of that trip, these photos fell to the bottom of the to do list. With travel and work craziness they had been put off for far to long now.

American Pipit

Dawn, (or close to it) at the Alpine Visitor Center is a great place to be. There are no other people, and the rising sun which seems to be shining from far below lights subjects in an unexpected way.

American Pipit

I scanned the snowfields for any sign of Rosy-Finches, but struck out once again. Maybe this weekend.... Notice the difference between the two American Pipits, from checking around a bit I understand that there can be both 'darker' and 'paler' adults, and their non-breeding plumage show varying amounts of streaking.

White-crowned Sparrow

Who needs wings? That little sparrow has some hops!

Lincoln's Sparrow

Next post... Mountain Mammals.

A few leftovers from the CFO convention trips before I begin to try to catch up this current week. It is so good to have too many birds to share!

While up in the high country meadows on our Red Feather Lakes trip, we were unsuccessful in our attempts to track down a Williamson's Sapsucker, we had a very cooperative Lincoln's Sparrow. It was perched in front of a willow thicket, and sat as an entire birding crew got long looks at it. I tried to move around it to get a bit better angle in the mid-day glare, and was somewhat successful.


The trip to Phantom Canyon was not one that was well suited to photography, but I did get a slightly closer shot of a Green-tailed Towhee to share. My previous post didn't have the same camo pattern of shadows going on, but what this one sacrifices in face detail it does regain by showing a bit more of the tail color.

Finally, there was that last life bird that I added on the impromptu stop returning from Wyoming. Just as we were reaching our turnaround point our trip leader heard a bird calling from the bushes, and I was fortunate to get this shot of a female American Redstart.

Once again I would like to express my gratitude to the CFO board for coordinating the event, the trip leaders who got us out to the primo sites, and to all my fellow birders on the trips who shared their experience and enthusiasm to make sure that everyone was getting on the good birds. I arrived as a mostly anonymous individual, and am sure that next year if I am able to attend I will be seeing more familiar faces, and generally more familiar with the whole event.

I find that in life there are certain situations that you only get to experience as 'firsts' once. This was one of those events. I know that any future bird trips or conventions I attend will be different, because I will have this one to compare them to. My slate is no longer blank, but I couldn't have picked a better event to fill it on. Watch out birding world and CFO, my bar has been set high!

Missing a Twitch - not the worst thing that could happen

Yesterday, a Boulder birder reported seeing a Worm-eating Warbler at the South Mesa Trail. I went for a quick try on a late lunch - and failed to find it. But the Yellow-rumpeds were out in force, and one even shot for a few shots in a row. After looking at my posts from a year back I realized that I had fallen behind my 2009 count at this point of the year. That got me going a bit, so I made a 15 minute stop on the way home at a small lake along the Boulder Turnpike, Hodgson-Harris Reservoir. I approached as close as I was able and with a bit of scanning was able to throw together a list of sixteen species. I added a distant Spotted Sandpiper, and then as I was turning to leave spotted a small bird moving in the dried cattails.

It was another Lincoln's Sparrow! I can honestly say that in the field, with only my camera's eyepiece to scan through I had no idea what species this was. Thanks to my encounter in April, as soon as I had a full picture on my screen I knew that it was a Lincoln's Sparrow. My first series were from a good distance and a bit washed out, but fortunately a cloud crossed the sky and I got a couple later that show a bit more detail. The main field marks to note on the Lincoln's Sparrow are the narrow black streaks on a buffy breast, and the facial pattern that has two buffy mustache stripes and clear eye-rings.

Even though it wasn't a new species, even for the year it was a fun find. As so often happens to me, a recently seen life bird reappears shortly after to reinforce the species. Once again I am left to wonder if the study after initially finding the bird makes the mind more apt to detect it sub-consciously as it enters my environment, or if just having more experience in the field leads to more chance encounters falling closely together. As with all things in life there is probably a bit of both, but it is a phenomenon that always makes me think - what in nature doesn't though?

So, missing a bird kept me seeing cool sights - and I'll take that any day.

2010 Count: 122

Boulder Habitat Delivers Again

Migration seems to have reached full pitch, in the midst of my pager weekend. Having a short leash I decided to head back to the Walden / Sawhill Ponds Complex in Boulder County yesterday morning. The trip didn't disappoint. 34 species in a couple of hours, including a handful of returning winter migrants, a bunch of favorites, great weather and two lifers - this bird and a mammal.

The Lincoln's Sparrow can be difficult to find because like some others it spends most of its time deep in thick brush. I was lucky, as I walked along a narrow, willow covered rise separating two ponds I heard some movement in the brush as I passed. I stopped a few feet beyond and looked back with the sun. Eventually I was rewarded as this bird perched several times in spots that allowed me relatively good looks through the branches.

At the time I had no idea what I was seeing, just that the buffy malar stripes, (the line that runs down and away from the bill, below the eye), gave me a pronounced impression of yellow in the field, and that it was a mark I couldn't place to a species with which I was familiar. In addition to getting the pictures I made some notes in the field to help me with my identification later. I noted that there was faint striping at the neck and shoulders, but that it didn't feature on the breast, which was plain gray.

When I got back home I checked the pics, zooming in for detail, and dove into the field guides to knock out an ID. I eliminated the Le Conte's, Henslow's and Nelson's Sparrows, because while all have yellow on the their malar stripes or regions, in all cases it reaches above the eye. I then found the Lincoln's and was glad to be able to match up all the field marks indicated with my shots and notes. Then I checked against the archives of the COBirds mailing list to make sure that the timing was right to have a sighting in this area. To my surprise I found that someone had reported one from the same area, at a different pond, only four days before. I had read the alert, but didn't register the sparrow, or dismissed it as one that I would be unlikely to relocate. I'm still not sure if that is a good indication to recheck reports before heading out, or to trust to dumb luck when in the field. Either way I was ecstatic to have a new bird for my life list, and confirmation ready waiting for my new I when I got home.

Really quite a handsome bird, when it decides to make itself visible.

2010 Count: 103

Lifetime: 212