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BIRDING LIST – MAY 25-30, 2009

It was a week spent catching up on work. I did not make any trips, just my commutes back and forth through ten miles of irrigated farm land between my house and my lab. Yesterday, however, Joe Rigli and I set out on a morning’s birding north of Fort Morgan, only to be sidetracked for an hour or so by the strange-looking airplane at “FMX” (see following story).

            The prairie in northeast Colorado is lush green due to the cool, very wet spring. This season’s stars so far are patches of a very showy white evening primrose which appear to be patches of snow from a distance and look more like scattered white tissues as you get closer.

Here is my week list:

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THEY CALL HER “DOUBLE UGLY”

Peter Walker

What would you get if you put wings on a combine? The result couldn’t be much uglier than the funny-looking twin-engine airplane that spent a great deal of time at the Fort Morgan Airport Saturday morning practicing landings and takeoffs.

The unmarked grayish aircraft, it turns out, is a recent acquisition of the United States Air Force. Four young pilots from the 318^th Special Operations Squadron at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico have been assigned to familiarize themselves with the special plane. Read more…

by Peter Walker

(Maine whitetail photo by David Walker)

One of my favorite game warden stories was told to me years after the fact over cups of coffee with two of the three Maine wardens involved in the caper. Roger and Danny were in the same Maine Warden Service training class in the early 1970s. As the end of several months of training drew near, they spent more and more time in the field being mentored by experienced district officers.

The fall night of their big adventure, the two were assigned to patrol for night hunters in eastern Maine under the tutelage of Eric, a tall, gruff, deep-voiced veteran of the Maine Warden Service. The three were sitting in the dark in a pickup truck pulled into the edge of the woods off a large field. The field was well off the highway and accessible via a one-lane woods road.

Catching “deer jackers,” as they are known in Maine, is a game of patience. It takes long hours of sitting quietly, waiting for the bad guys to make a move. Even then you must witness them at least using a spotlight in order to make a pinch. In Maine, the fields are carved from dense woodlands. So that narrows the playing field a bit for the game wardens just as it concentrates the whitetails for the poachers. Read more…

TWO STATES AND FOUR BIOMES

            It was a very interesting birding week. I spent the first 4 days here in Colorado and the last three in San Diego. On Wednesday I made a business journey into the ponderosa pine foothills of the Rockies to about 7,500’ elevation in southern Douglas County. Thus my Colorado list for the week contains montane as well as grassland species. On the San Diego trip Nancy and I spent time on or near the harbor but also took a long drive to the east and northeast into inland farm and ranch country. Having been to San Diego twice before, there were fewer possibilities for life birds this time around. Nevertheless I added two species: California towhee and red-crowned parrot.

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ANOTHER WEEK OF BIRDING IN MORGAN COUNTY, COLORADO – MAY 10-16, 2009

And just like that, the spring migration through Morgan County has peaked. Last week most of the trees were in flower or had tiny leaves just beginning to open. This week the leaves are half-sized and growing every day. The little birds in the treetops are less visible, but the bulk of them have already moved through.

I did not get out as much this past week as I did the week before. But yesterday Joe Rigli and I made a trip down through Wildcat Canyon and over to the vicinity of Jackson Lake. We hit a pocket of warblers in a grove of cottonwoods down in the canyon that held a mother lode of birds and filled out our spring warbler lists nicely including a couple of fairly unusual ones for these parts.

All in all it was a very cool spring and the migration less spectacular than average. But the year is young and there is much more to come.

Here is my list for the week. Next week: San Diego!

Pied-billed grebe

Western grebe

American white pelican

Double-crested cormorant

Great blue heron

Canada goose

Wood duck

Mallard

Cinnamon teal Read more…

IF YOU MUST SLAP A MOOSE….

by Peter Walker

(photo by David Walker)

Once again I am taking you back to my native state of Maine. I knew a young game warden (for the purposes of this story I’ll call him Danny) when I worked there about 30 years ago who began his outdoor career as a 6-month seasonal state park ranger. After three years as a ranger, he transferred to the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

As a ranger Danny was assigned from May through October to Baxter State Park, a very remote 180,000-acre tract of mountains, clear northern lakes, and boreal forest in northern Maine. Baxter State Park is a remarkable natural treasure that was accumulated by a wealthy bachelor governor, Percival Baxter, who bequeathed the property to the people of the State of Maine with the proviso that it remain forever wild. Read more…

SPRING MIGRATION APPROACHES ITS PEAK

How much things change in a week! Last week’s stars were multiple large flocks of Brewer’s and yellow-headed blackbirds. Yesterday it was big flocks of lark buntings and Spizella sparrows – chipping, Brewer’s and clay-colored. Joe Rigli and I saw one flock of buntings that numbered at least 250 and a mixed Spizella flock at least as large. The warbler migration still hasn’t peaked, but there are new species arriving every day. We saw our first blue grosbeak and our first woodland thrushes, looking very out-of-place in local sparse riparian habitats. Near Narrow’s Bridge yesterday we found two blue-gray gnatcatchers zipping around in the tangled twigs of a peachleaf willow. It’s a very uncommon species in these parts, but this is the third year in a row we’ve seen them.

 Another good sighting was a nearly simultaneous observation by Bruce Bosley of four cattle egrets in Washington County and two more by me in Weld County just after talking with Bruce by cell phone. Cattle egrets have retracted in range and have been nearly absent from this region for several years.

Read more…

Monday morning I had a doctor’s appointment in Greeley at 0800. Afterwards I headed to Brush to my office. It’s a little over an hour’s drive and, as I often do, I decided to take a “shortcut” on some back roads. My route took me to the eastern Morgan County town of Weldona and from there northward on an uninhabited series of dirt roads to the ridge along the Judson Hills and eastward to the escarpment above Wildcat Canyon. It’s dry, rugged country and usually chock full of birds.

It was about 50 degrees Fahrenheit. I was driving with the driver’s side window down listening for bird songs on the south slope of the hills when I heard a loud, sweet song. I stopped and backed up until I heard it again. It was a spectacular song, beginning with a slurred whistle followed by a complex series of trills. It was vaguely familiar yet not something I’ve heard very often out here on the northeast Colorado plains.

For a minute or two I was frustrated. I just couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Then I finally spied a pale little face staring out from inside a large, snowplow-damaged sandsage (silvery wormwood) shrub on the banking of the road a few feet away. As I focused the camera on the face, the little bird began to sing again. Wow, what a voice! Read more…

by Peter Walker

 A couple of years ago my grandson, Jason, introduced me to the recent hit animated movie “Over the Hedge.” One of the funniest scenes takes place in a tract home when the invading small animals are confronted by the woman of the house, armed with a broom.

In the confusion the skunk turns to one of her compatriots and says, “I’m sorry you have to see this.” Then she yells out, “FIRE IN THE HOLE!”

The view pans back away from the house as, “POOM!” a green cloud simultaneously blows out from the windows and doors.

That incident reminds me of a tale often told in the Walker family. My paternal grandfather, Elmer Walker, was a big man for his generation. At 6’ 3” he had a deep booming voice to match his stature. Read more…

The week spanning the first of May is a special time for birders in Northeast Colorado. A few winter species are still lingering and a lot of migratory birds are just arriving. In the past week I’ve been to Denver (75 miles southwest of Fort Morgan) and back, Wray (100 miles straight east of Fort Morgan on the Nebraska border) and back, on a <2 mile walk on Brush State Wildlife Area, and on a drive up through Wildcat Canyon just north and northwest of Fort Morgan. My week list of birds follows: Read more…