Listing Through Life

I’d done a lot of driving and birding over the week, and I expect to do a lot more next week, so Saturday, I decided to stick closer to home. I spent a few hours at Fountain Creek and Clear Spring Ranch and was home before noon.

Spotted Towhee at Fountain Creek

Eastern Kingbird at Clear Spring Ranch

Brown Thrasher at Clear Spring Ranch

When I arrived at Clear Spring Ranch, another birder with a dog on a leash had just started down the trail toward the T intersection. I wasn’t in a chatty mood, so I headed north on the trail. When I got to the place where the road crosses a culvert in a strip of cottonwoods, I saw two Lewis’s Woodpeckers on a stump at the edge of a field. This is significant because they were my first for El Paso County, my first of the year, and—most significantly—the first I’d ever found on my own (as opposed to chasing down someone else’s sighting). I maneuvered through the trees to where I could get decent photos, but the stump they were on was in shadow. I waited for the sun to shift and light things up better, but before that happened, a Cooper’s Hawk blew through the grove and scattered everything.

After waiting a couple minutes for the woodpeckers to return, I walked back to the trail. I soon saw them again sharing a tall, isolated cottonwood with a pair of similarly-sized kestrels. The lighting was better here, but I wasn’t nearly as close. After a few minutes, one of the woodpeckers flew off to the south and the other off to the east. I didn’t see them again. I later ran into four hot-shot birders looking for them in another part of the park—so I know I wasn’t the first person to find them. But still, I hadn’t heard they were there and found them on my own.

Otherwise, things were dead. I got in my  miles and headed for home.

Chico Basin Ranch is a working cattle ranch that straddles the border between El Paso and Pueblo Counties. That’s out in the cholla flats, but a series of ponds along a small creek—and the cottonwoods growing around them—make it a great migrant trap. I’ve known about the ranch almost as long as I’ve lived in Colorado, but I’d never gone because (1) there’s a $15 fee, and (2) skepticism about how good it could be.

But during a fairly slow first week of birding in May, I decided to give it a try. I spent 6 or 7 hours. I saw 55 birds, including 8 new for the year—2 new for El Paso County, and 9 new for Pueblo County.

Least Sandpiper

One of 7 Ladder-backed Woodpeckers.

Lark Sparrow

Spotted Sandpipers at Headquarters Pond.

Singing Brown Thrasher by Rose Pond

When I was birding at Rose Pond, I met three other guys who were birding together. They were very nice and told me how to get to all the hot-spots on the ranch. One of those spots, called Bell Park (for an old dinner bell that hangs on a wooden frame), has hosted a Prairie Warbler for the past several days. I decided to take a shot, even though the guys said they hadn’t seen the bird when they’d been there earlier that morning. To get there, I had to open a gate made of old strips of wood and barbed wire, and then close it behind me.

At Bell Park, I spotted a pair of Ash-throated Flycatchers.

I also saw a gray empidonax flycatcher with a long, slender tail that it constantly pumped up and down, phoebe-like. I don’t usually attempt to identify empids by sight, but the shape of the tail, the wagging, and the color convinced me this was my second ever Gray Flycatcher.

I had done a fairly comprehensive scan of the area when the three guys I’d met by Rose Pond showed up. Someone told them the Prairie Warbler was still hanging around. We all set out in search of it. Sometimes I was separated from them, at other times I was with one or more. I pointed out a Golden Eagle sailing over, and that impressed them. After that, they pretty much accepted me as one of the group. I was talking with one of them when I spotted a MacGillivray’s Warbler in the brush at the base of a cottonwood—about 40 yards away. The other two had just seen it, but they were much closer and were again impressed that I’d seen it from so far away. When I then picked out the Prairie Warbler foraging high in a cottonwood, my reputation was sealed.

We drove back through the gate to the trees around the banding station. They only stayed a couple minutes, and I only stuck around a little bit longer. Just after I’d exited the ranch gate, I spotted a small flock of Lark Buntings near the Hanover Fire Station. For some reason, my camera just doesn’t seem able to capture the black feathers well. I’m not happy with any of these photos.

A female Lark Bunting

A Western Meadowlark sang on a fence post nearby.