After video church on Sunday, I felt like getting outside some more. I saw that birders had found a Winter Wren, a couple Swamp Sparrows, Rusty Blackbirds, a Pine Warbler, and a Northern Parula, all within a small area below the dam at Chatfield State Park. I drove up and quickly found a group of birders staring into the brush along a creek. Within a couple minutes, I spotted the Parula and followed another birder’s directions to the Pine Warbler. I hung around for another hour, but didn’t see the other birds (although others said they saw the Swamp Sparrow while I was there). I was mostly concerned about the Rusty Blackbirds because I had never seen them in Colorado, and hadn’t seen them anywhere in several years (whereas I had just seen Swamp Sparrows in Illinois last week and several Winter Wrens in Ohio a few weeks ago).
Northern Parula
I left the area and walked around South Platte Park to get my miles in. There weren’t a lot of birds around, but I did manage to get better photos of Gadwalls than I ever had before.
On my way back into the state park, I passed a couple birders who had been looking at the warblers earlier. I asked them if the Rusty Blackbirds had shown up, and they all said no. I decided to try again anyway. A different group of birders were tracking the warblers. Within a minute, I spotted two Rusty Blackbirds. They flew into a small marsh. One of them sat in a tree while the other foraged on a Beaver house.
The light for photography was great, so I kept looking for other things. A guy about 30 yards away found the Pine Warbler and was very insistent that I come look at it. To appease him, I went. This is a still from a video, but it’s clear enough to show the bird’s oddly elongated lower mandible. It’s obviously deformed, but the bird didn’t seem unhealthy in any way (unless you consider the fact that it was 800 miles out of range in an area with winters too hard for an insect-eater to survive).
