Listing Through Life

This wasn’t a lifer. I saw one in Sabino Canyon outside Tucson in 1984. But that was 36 years ago, and that’s a long time. I believe this is only the fourth one ever seen in Colorado.

A male Pyrrhuloxia (pronounced PEARhaLOXia) was discovered during yesterday’s snowstorm at a feeder in a blue collar neighborhood in Denver. It was seen again today. I didn’t relish the thought of driving into the city, but the bird stuck around, and I got a little restless in the afternoon. I suddenly decided to go for it. I left home at 2:55 and got back home at 5:20.

The bird was perched cooperatively in a tree along the street when I arrived. There were perhaps eight other birders in the neighborhood when I arrived. One of them pointed it out to me. I saw it less than a minute after I got out of my car.

It flew down to a feeder pole, but didn’t stay long.

I next found it in a bush between two small houses and pointed it out to other people.

And then it disappeared. I wandered down an alley and looked through the slats of a white board fence. The Pyrrhuloxia was on a feeder, eating corn. I got the best shot I could through the slats. I had this view to myself until just before the bird took off. Another birder came by and I showed it to him just before it took off.

This one is a male. The female doesn’t have red on the breast or face — just a few red splashes on the tail, wings, and crest.

If you’re wondering ù and I know I was — where the name Pyrrhuloxia comes from, it used to be part of the Latin scientific name, from the Greek words pyrrhos (reddish or orange) and loxos (oblique — referring to the shape of its bill). I have no idea why it never got an English common name, like Desert Cardinal or somesuch.

It flew off and wasn’t seen again during the remaining 15 minutes I stayed in the area. I don’t relish city birding, and I’d gotten the photos I wanted, so I headed for home.

turdus (a thrush) rufopalliatus (from rufus rufous and palliatus mantled)

Cortez, Colorado — Denny Lake Park

Monday, February 7, 2022 — 3:27 pm

The Rufous-backed Robin is a close relative of the American Robin. Its normal range is central Mexico, but it’s been known to wander into southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas upon occasion. It had never been reported as far north as Colorado — until January 18 when one was discovered at Denny Lake Park in Cortez, in the extreme southwestern corner of the state.

Cortez is a long way from home, and I had covid at the time, so I could only watch the eBird reports and wish. But the bird stuck around day after day — longer even than my virus — and since I’m now retired and fancy-free, I decided to go for it. But then I had to wait another four days for a snowstorm to rumble through and the roads to clear.

The couple who found the bird live locally and head to the park pretty much every day. They saw it on Sunday, so I knew it was still around. I headed west on Monday and was prepared to stay overnight in Cortez and look again on Tuesday morning if I struck.

I left home at 6:30 AM and drove down, arriving shortly after 1:00. Denny Lake is man-made, about four acres in size, and is bordered here and there by clumps of Russian olive trees. The robin has been eating the olives.

There were no other birders around, and I wasn’t sure where people normally saw the bird. I wandered up and down the shore without seeing robins of any sort. I did remember one report that mentioned a “periwinkle” house, so that’s where I concentrated my efforts until another birder showed up.

He was a local birder named Eric who had been coming daily to check on the bird. He said he knew its habits well, and escorted me around the area, pointing out all the places the robin has been seen over the past 20 days. We didn’t find it, and I was beginning to get that feeling — the one I get when I show up to see a rare bird a day after it was last seen. But Eric told me not to get discouraged. He was confident it was around somewhere.

There was a clump of olive trees at the far north end of the lake where the bird has been spotted once or twice during the three weeks it’s been at Denny Lake. We wandered up there and were approaching the final olive tree when a robin-like bird flushed up from the ground under the tree and landed in a tangle of branches. I didn’t have a great view, but I could see it was the Rufous-backed Robin. My camera did not want to focus on the bird — it was convinced I wanted pictures of tree branches. This was the best shot I got before the bird flew down out of sight.

Five minutes later, Eric found it again, and this time it was more cooperative. It flew up into the higher branches of the same tree and foraged for olives for maybe five minutes, moving from branch to branch. I spent the time trying for a better photo. Here’s what I got.

In several of the photos on eBird, the robin is standing on one leg. I wondered if it was injured, but apparently, this is just something it does — like in the photo below.

Perhaps 15 minutes after I first saw it, it flew out of the tree across the lake toward the periwinkle house. I had my bird and my photos, so I decided not to chase it again. I shook Eric’s hand and thanked him for his help. He was beaming. I think he enjoyed helping me find it as much as I enjoyed seeing it. He was also oddly excited that he could add Rufous-backed Robin to his “birds seen pooping” list. I don’t have one of those.

The Rufous-backed Robin has a similar shape and feel as an American Robin but is a little bit smaller and trimmer. Its head, nape, wings, and tail are slate gray. Its breast, at least on the bird I saw, was a paler orange than that of an American Robin. The back was a rich rufous. The eye, bill, and legs are orange. The white throat is streaked with black, but this didn’t really stand out to me on the bird I saw. You can see it a bit in a couple of the photos, but it’s not as noticeable as in the field guide pictures.

Here is my search pattern. We finally found the bird at the upper right — that clump of blue was me walking back and forth looking for an angle for a good photo. (The periwinkle house is under the “E” in “Lakeside.” I knew you were wondering.)

A photo of Denny Lake, although I took the picture before I saw the bird and didn’t pan as far to the north (left) as the olive tree where I saw it.

It was almost four by this time and still light out. I didn’t want to spend six hours in a hotel in Cortez, so I headed back east and ended up driving all the way home. I arrived shortly after 10:00 after having driven 736 miles in 13 hours, interrupted by four food/gas stops and a two-and-a-half-hour search for a bird. Silly, yes. But fun.

UPDATE: Eric and I were apparently the last people to see this bird. It couldn’t be found later on Monday or on Tuesday or Wednesday. This isn’t really an accomplishment, but it does make an interesting addition to the story of my 13-hour drive. It’s just that birders get a lot of credit for finding rare birds, but I got none whatsoever for losing one.

A Fox Sparrow has been hanging out at Clear Spring Ranch for the past couple weeks. Everybody and their mother has been there to see it. The one time I tried, there were so many birders that not much of anything was showing up. I tried again on the morning of February 1 and finally saw it, along with the rather rare White-throated and Harris’s Sparrows (and a mix of juncos, Song Sparrows, White-crowned Sparrows, and Spotted Towhees).

Harris’s Sparrow

White-throated Sparrow (Tan-striped type).

White-crowned Sparrows

First-winter White-crowned.

I birded near Denver on the morning of Thursday, February 10. At a feeder next to a house in Golden, I saw my first Colorado Common Redpolls. There was another birder there, a woman named Gwen. We got to chatting, and I mentioned that I might be moving later this year. As I left, she told me she was sorry I was moving because she enjoyed birding with me …….. ? (I’d never seen her before.)

The bird in the foreground is a Pine Siskin.

I went to Bear Creek Trail in Lakewood for a (failed) attempt to see a Pacific Wren that’s been hanging out there lately. As long as I was there, I decided to hike up the trial a ways to get my five miles in and, while I was at it, keep my eyes open for an American Dipper. This time I was successful.

Ferruginous Hawk on Hanover Road (2/15)

I drove out Hanover Road specifically to find and photograph a Rough-legged Hawk. I found a female, but for some reason, almost all my photos came out blurry. Here are the best of them.

A pair of Common Goldeneyes at Lake Pueblo State Park (2/15)

Red-breasted Mergansers (that’s the female on the right in the first photo — the others are all males) at Valco Ponds (2/15)

There were a ton of  Common Goldeneyes in the gravel pit across the Arkansas River from Valco Ponds. I scoped them carefully and finally found two Barrow’s Goldeneyes. The white mark on the face is crescent-shaped rather than round, there’s more black on the back (with white “windows” on the shoulder), and they have a black spur that comes down along the breast and almost reaches the water.

Loggerhead Shrike at Lake Pueblo (2/15)

It was cold and snowy the whole week of the 21st. By Friday, I was itchy to get outside. I tried for three very local birds, all within 10 miles of home. I missed the Northern Shrike at Sinton Pond. I’ve seen many, but not this year yet.

My next try was at Rampart Park for a Winter Wren that showed up recently. I didn’t have much hope and didn’t find it. But another birder, Tanja, whom I’ve met and conversed with before, did find it as I was walking toward my car. I just barely heard her scream for me. I ran back and saw the wren. It was down along the banks of a frozen creek in a gully. There were many places where grass and roots hung over the banks and the bird was often out of sight. We followed it along the creek for maybe 25 yards. It finally came out and posed for maybe 15 seconds.

The only problem is that the experts, after listening to recordings, decided it isn’t a Winter Wren, it’s a Pacific Wren like the one I saw near Denver last week.

Here’s a close-up of that photo and some others I got.

Here’s what we usually saw. It’s in there.

I also tried again — and failed again — to see the local White-winged Doves that hang out near Old Farm Park.

With the possibility that we may move before next winter, I am very aware that this year may be my last opportunity to see some western birds. With that in mind, and with no interest in spending another day in Pueblo or Fountain, I looked on eBird for a place where rosy-finches and Pine Grosbeaks were recently reported. The closest location with any real promise was in the community of Alice, about 10 miles northwest of Idaho Springs. The “hotspot” was listed as “private but with public access,” which I took to mean feeders outside the house of someone who didn’t mind people standing in their yard.

And that’s what it turned out to be. It took me about two hours to drive to the small, unincorporated community, which sits at 10,000 feet. The wind was howling when I arrived. It even knocked me off balance a few times when I wasn’t braced. The house was in a pine forest, which cut the wind some, but it was decidedly chilly. I parked at the top of the driveway and walked down the slope to a spot from which I could see the feeders. It didn’t look like they’d been filled anytime recently, but there was still some feed left. I never saw a person in or around the house.

I stood and waited about 15 minutes, seeing nothing except a few Mountain Chickadees. Finally, a small flock of rosy-finches showed up. In my limited experience with rosy-finches, they don’t fly directly to feeders. They stage in nearby treetops for anywhere from 5-15 minutes, then fly to the rooftop near the feeder, and then swarm the feeders. Then they suddenly flush and disappear over the trees for maybe 10 minutes before repeating the behavior. That’s exactly what these did. I stuck around for about an hour and a half, and I think the flock came and left five times. Two of the times they flushed it was because of a Sharp-shinned Hawk that hung out nearby and kept crashing the party. I think the second time he attacked, he may have gotten a finch. I think I saw something dark in its talons as it flashed away through the pine. (Interestingly, over the next few weeks, the Gray-crowned and Brown-capped Rosy-Finches continued to be seen at this location, but the Black Rosy-Finch was not seen again.)

The flock consisted mostly of Gray-crowned Rosy-Finches, with at least one Hepburn’s type mixed in. There were three or four Brown-capped Rosy-Finches and a Black Rosy-Finch, probably a first-winter bird because it was more gray than black.

I hung around a while in hopes that the Pine Grosbeaks would show, but no luck. Apart from the rosy-finches and chickadees, the only bird I saw on the feeders was a White-breasted Nuthatch. A Clark’s Nutcracker spent about 10 minutes surveying the area from the very top of a nearby pine, but that was about it for excitement. Still, if this is the last time I ever get to see rosy-finches, I got a good view and some decent photos.

Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch. All the finches spent a lot of time with their heads tilted to watch the sky, probably because of the Sharp-shinned Hawk.

All Gray-crowns — the one in the foreground with the gray cheeks is a Hepburn’s. While the Gray-crowned type nests in the Rocky Mountains from Alaska to Montana, Hepburn’s nests in the coastal ranges.

The middle bird is a Brown-capped Rosy-Finch, probably a first-winter bird.

Three looks at the Black Rosy-Finch.

In this feeder shot, all three species are lined up on the right, showing the subtle differences. The one in the foreground is a Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch. Next is the Black Rosy-Finch (facing right). The next bird is a Brown-capped Rosy-Finch (facing away). There may be a second Brown-capped down in the tray, facing away — the one with little contrast between the brown neck and gray cap.