Listing Through Life

Searching for Baird’s Sparrow

Posted on August 7, 2021 by Roger

There are only a few birds that breed in Colorado that I don’t have on my life list. One of these is the Baird’s Sparrow. Normally, this sparrow nests in northern Montana and North Dakota. But for the past seven years, a few have been found on Soapstone Prairie in extreme north-central Colorado. The problem is that the birds are generally seen early in the morning, the prairie is three hours north of my house, and there’s a three-mile hike to the spot after you get to the prairie.

But I decided to make the try. I got a hotel in Windsor, about 45 minutes south of the prairie. I woke up at 4:30 and took off in the dark. It was just first light when I pulled into the parking lot. There’s tons of smoke in the air from fires in California, and that cast an odd color and fuzziness on the prairie. I was disappointed to discover that the wind was blowing hard — at times I’m sure it reached 20 mph or more.

There was nobody else in the park as I set off along the trail. It was a narrow track through treeless desert, and I kept my eyes open for rattlesnakes. There were scattered Lark Buntings, Western Meadowlarks, and Horned Larks around, but nothing else — except cows.

I’m pretty sure that for most of the next two or three hours, I was at least three miles from another human. It didn’t bother me, but I was aware that I was on my own.

When I got to the spot where the Baird’s Sparrows have been seen, the sun was an orange spot in a smoky sky.

The wind was howling, and I figured my odds of seeing the bird were low. I played its song a few times, but didn’t expect to see anything. But I did.

A sparrow flew low for maybe 20 feet across a patch of thicker, greener grass on the east side of the trail. A few minutes later, I saw it make another short flight. It was exactly where people have reported the Baird’s Sparrow. I played the song again, and the bird flew to the fence and landed on a low strand of wire. My scope was useless in the wind, so I grabbed my camera and started taking photos. The bird was small and about 30 yards away, so I had trouble focusing. After maybe a minute and a half, it disappeared.

I looked at the photos that I got and convinced myself that I’d seen a Baird’s Sparrow. I hung around a few more minutes, but I felt like I’d accomplished my goal. I knew I had a long hike ahead of me and then a long drive after that, so I headed back to my car.

I didn’t run into anyone else on the trail, although there were a few cars in the lot and a guy in the entrance booth. He was lonely and came out to chat with me for five minutes or so.

I drove out of the park a mile or so and suddenly began having doubts. I pulled out my camera and a field guide and looked at my pictures again. This time I thought the bird I’d seen looked a lot more like a Grasshopper Sparrow, especially in this photo.

This one’s a little more ambiguous. It does seem to have a black necklace and some marks on the shoulder and face consistent with a Baird’s Sparrow. Could it be an immature Baird’s? But it’s the same bird as the one in the first photo that doesn’t show those marks.

My initial excitement was due, I think, to the fact that I was in the right spot and the bird responded to a Baird’s recording. But I just couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger and count it.

I headed home despondent. That feeling increased when I saw that a Baird’s Sparrow had been seen at another location at Soapstone Prairie about the same time I was looking at this bird. That location, however, would have entailed a 14-mile round-trip hike instead of the 7.6 mile hike I took. The birders who saw the Baird’s had biked to the location.

And then I saw that other birders had found a Baird’s Sparrow at Sharptail Ridge Open Space, near Chatfield State Park, just an hour north of my house. If it was worth getting up at 4:30 to see a Baird’s Sparrow one morning, it was worth it the next morning. I got up, drove up, and arrived right at first light again. This time the hike to the spot was just 2.4 miles. I found three other birders at the spot when I arrived. They hadn’t seen the bird. Then two more birders arrived. We stood around and looked for a half hour without seeing any birds.

Then the other birders decided to spread out and walk across the field in hopes of flushing the Baird’s Sparrow. I thought this was odd because the initial report asked birders not to play recordings there since the birds were rare and we wouldn’t want to stress them. It seemed to me that the guy who asked that was kinda being selfish, since he’d played the recording. It also seemed to me that hiking through the grass and flushing it would be at least as disruptive as playing a recording. But what do I know?

We spread out and walked across the field and flushed absolutely nothing. When we’d finished, I kept going to see what was over a rise. I found this.

Meanwhile, the rest of the birders headed back the other way and were joined by a sixth guy. I caught back up to them just as they flushed a couple birds along a ravine. Me and the new guy were downhill of everyone else and followed a bird that flew along the ravine. We flushed it a few more times but never got a good look. At one point it flew from right in front of me, and I saw its back was streaked in black and tan and white. That’s it.

Then I saw the uphill birders waving at me. I headed in their direction, but it was a third of a mile uphill and it took me a couple minutes. They told me their bird had landed on a fence post and it was definitely a Baird’s. It had flown down into the grass right in front of where they were standing. Had I been by myself, I would have pished or played its song, but they decided to flush it again. It darted 100 yards downhill into the ravine. We followed and flushed it again. This time it headed up over a ridge and out of sight. That’s the last I saw of it.

I looked at a photo of the bird another guy took when it was on the fence post. It was definitely a Baird’s Sparrow. I saw a Baird’s Sparrow. But I only identified it from a photo. I never saw an actual bird well enough to identify. Here’s the very bird I saw, five minutes before I saw it flying. I stole this off the internet.

I know other birders counted it as a Baird’s based on nothing more than what I’d seen, but I can’t bring myself to add it to my life list. I sent the photos of the bird I saw at Soapstone to an eBird moderator and asked for his opinion. About a year later, he got back to me and said it was a Grasshopper Sparrow. I guess I’ll have to make a trip to Montana.

Two very early mornings, hikes of 7.6 and 6.2 miles, and actually seeing other birders seeing the bird while not seeing it myself was all very frustrating.

I find myself struggling with a birding ethics question. If you see a bird, but only identify it from a photo taken by someone you were birding with, is that any different from taking a photo yourself and identifying it later from that? As of now, I’m not counting it.

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Sasquatch Outpost

Posted on July 31, 2021 by Roger

We drove up into the mountains west of Denver to the tiny town of Bailey. We planned to buy a hot dog at Coney Island Boardwalk, the hot dog-shaped diner I ate at last summer, but it was closed and it looked like it would likely stay closed.

We went to the nearby Sasquatch Outpost, a Bigfoot-related gift shop with a tiny “museum” attached. The museum had four tiny rooms with displays that made a tongue-in-cheek attempt to convince us that Bigfoot is real. They didn’t succeed — not with me anyway. My wife claims she’s not sure.

Since there are no specimens and no clear photos, the “evidence” consists of eyewitness accounts and molds of footprints. In other words, no evidence whatsoever.

Some folks on a video tried to explain that the “tens of thousands” eyewitness accounts dating back a hundred years or more are proof, but isn’t it odd how not a single one of those people had a gun or a camera?

Here’s an artist’s sketch of what Bigfoot might look like. Pretty convincing, no?

Much of the evidence consisted of photos of trees that were broken off or bent in ways “that no human could do.” Apparently, Bigfoot believers have never heard of storms.

We read everything there was to read and took advantage of all the photo ops, and still, I don’t think it took 20 minutes to see it all. We bought some silly things in the silly gift shop and headed back east.

We stopped in Indian Hills at Mac Nation, a restaurant that specializes in macaroni and cheese with various ingredients/toppings. I got the Ohio, with chicken cordon bleu. It was very tasty, although I quickly pushed aside the dab of spicy mustard on top. My wife got the Wisconsin, with four cheeses, which was also tasty.

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National Museum of World War II Aviation

Posted on July 24, 2021 by Roger

I hadn’t visited this museum, even though it’s in Colorado Springs, because a new building was under construction. I finally made it on a breezy, rainy Saturday. I stayed about 3 hours. There are 20 or so planes in three hangers, all of them flyable. Not long after I arrived, I joined a tour to a fourth hanger where restoration work is done. The guide was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam.

The most interesting plane in that hanger was a PBY Catalina. From the sign, “This plane was delivered to the Royal Canadian Air Force, which used it for anti-submarine patrols flying from Reykjavik, Iceland. Post-war, the plane served at various locations around Canada before it retired from military service in 1962. It was converted to a water bomber and spent the next 32 years as a firefighting platform.”

As the guide talked about all that went into restoring a plane, I began to wonder if “restore” was the right word. I asked how much of the plane was original. He said 20% or less. He said there was an example of a recently recovered plane in the main hanger. Here’s what that one looked like.

To get from this to a flyable aircraft seems more like reproducing than restoring. But I quibble. Some of the planes in the museum were more like the Catalina —used for other things and restored to the way they looked during the war, but never as bad off as this.

Waco JYM. From the sign, “The Waco JYM was developed in 1929 to meet the increasing demand in the 1920s for rugged air mail planes. The JYM has a single back seat for the pilot and a forward seat that could handle two slim people or packages, with a metal cover that could enclose the packages or the empty seat. For mail, there were two compartments with a lockable cover in the fuselage, one forward and one aft of the pilot. Charles Lindberg flew this plane as part of his post-Atlantic trip public relations work for Northwest Airlines.”

Grumman F3F Flying Barrel. From the sign, “The Grumman F3F-2 was the last Navy and Marine biplane fighter. It entered service in 1936, and retired from front-line service in 1941. Its short operational life served to underscore its role in the Navy’s transition from biplanes to monoplanes. This aircraft was originally assigned to Marine Fighting Squadron VMF 2, later re-designated VMF-211, in 1937. Records indicate it crashed into a mountain at Wailuku, Maui, Hawaii Jun 24, 1941. It was recovered in 1980s and subsequently restored to the magnificent, flyable aircraft it is today. The insignia on the side of the aircraft include the blue wasp with boxing gloves of squadron VF-7 assigned to the U.S.S. Wasp and the fuselage ID of 6F6 of the Enterprise squadron.”

F3A-1 Corsair. A Navy fighter, build by Brewster. No Brewster’s Corsairs reached the front lines. From the sign, “This Corsair was assigned to VMF-914 at the Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station. On December 19th, 1944, it crashed in a swamp ten miles southwest of Cherry Point while on a Ground Controlled Interception training mission. The pilot parachuted but was killed. The remains were salvaged in 1990.”

SBD Dauntless. From the sign. “The SBD Dauntless was the most effective U.S. dive bomber of WWII. It sank more Japanese shipping than any other Allied bomber. Navy and Marine SBD squadrons were credited with sinking Japanese carriers in the Battles of the Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal. This aircraft crashed in Lake Michigan on May 14th, 1944, following engine failure after takeoff from the USS Sable, a modified excursion steamer used for training at Great Lakes Naval Air Station. The aircraft’s remains were retrieved from Lake Michigan in the mid-1990s.”

Grumman TBM Avenger. From the sign. “The Grumman Avenger torpedo bombers built for the Navy originally carried the designation of TBF. The Avenger came into service in 1942 to replace the Douglas Devastator, but in its first combat at Midway in June 1942, it fared badly. Five out of six were shot down during an unescorted attack on Japanese ships.” There was no information specific to this particular plane.

Lockheed P-38 Lightning. From the sign, “The P-38 Lightning was the only successful twin-engine air superiority fighter of the war. It served in both Europe and the Pacific. P-38s were preferred in the Pacific because flying was either over dense jungle or the ocean; the safety of a second engine was important. The engines of the P-38 were turbocharged, so the aircraft maintained its excellent performance even at very high altitudes. The leading American Ace during WWII was Richard Bong with 40 victories, all scored in P-38s. For a time, Bong flew with the 39th Fighter Squadron. In total, 1,800 Japanese planes were destroyed by P-38s in the Pacific. This aircraft was dug out of the jungle near Finschhafen Airfield, Papua New Guinea, where it had been buried following the war. On a mission on December 31st, 1942, pilot Ken Sparks was flying this aircraft and was credited with two aerial victories. He downed one Japanese aircraft by gunfire and found himself engaged with another. While approaching each other a high speed head on, the Japanese banked left but hit Sparks’ outer right wing. It tore several feet from the wingtip, but the Zero lost its wing and crashed. Sparks went on to have 11 aerial victories in several different aircraft.”

North American B-25 Mitchell. From the sign, “In 1939, the U.S. Army Air Corps put in an order for new class of “medium'” bomber. The proposal called for a twin-engine plane capable of flying 300 mph, carrying a 3,000-pound bomb load, and having a 2,000-mile range. The B-25 became most famous for outstanding work in the Pacific Theater. There, specially modified aircraft carried eight (and sometimes more) machine guns that fired forward, attacking Japanese shipping and airfields. B-25s also skipped bombs off the water and into Japanese ships. “In the Mood” was built on August 29th, 1944, in Kansas City and became a trainer, first at Turner Field in Georgia, and then at twelve other fields, until it became surplus in 1958. She was a spray tanker for about ten years. It has flown off several carriers, was in the movie Pearl Harbor and is the only B-25 to takeoff from a carrier in dry dock.”

There were several other planes, but these were the ones that caught my attention. There were also several displays, most of which contained the personal effects of a particular WWII pilot. I get why they are there, but uniforms all begin to look alike after a while. The history of major air battles and missions were spaced throughout the hanger, but they were too brief to be intriguing to me — if I want to know about things like that, I read books. But still, it was well done and I wouldn’t be surprised if I go back at some point.

The gift shop included parts of recovered WWII that could be purchased, but I settled for a museum magnet and a small model of a P-38 Lightning.

Posted in Museums, Transportation | Comments Off

The Short, Sad Life of a Say’s Phoebe

Posted on July 20, 2021 by Roger

In the spring of the first full year we lived in our house, I noticed a Say’s Phoebe repeatedly attempting to build a nest on a narrow ledge on our front porch. The nest kept falling off the ledge long before the bird finished building it. I ripped the roof and one wall off an old birdhouse and nailed it up under an overhang on the porch. Before the day was through, the phoebe was building a nest in it.

The phoebes returned the next year, but did not return in 2020. This year they got a late start because a pair of House Finches used the nest early in the spring. But when they moved out, the Say’s Phoebes came back. We knew they’d laid eggs when they began getting aggressive when we went outside.

On July 4, I climbed up and took this photo of four just-hatched babies in the nest. They couldn’t have been more than a day or two old at the time.

Every few days, I took an update photo.

July 9

July 13

July 16

July 19 at 8:00 am. Only two of the four babies were still in the nest.

July 19 at 1:00 pm. One of the remaining babies left the nest. It landed on the roof right outside my study window and spent eight or ten minutes observing the world.

July 19 at 10:10 pm. The phoebe was taking some practice flights around the yard. As I was working at my desk, I was startled by something large flashing right past the window at high speed. My fears were confirmed. A Cooper’s Hawk grabbed the phoebe and carried it to a nearby tree. As I watched, the hawk tore into the bird. For a while, I could tell the phoebe was still alive. It flapped a bit and turned its head toward the hawk and opened its mouth in what I presume was a threat posture. It did no good. Within minutes, all that was left was a small pile of feathers in the neighbor’s yard. One of the parents called repeatedly from the top of our tree, but that did no good either.

I understand nature and even like hawks. But this was just a little bit too close to home — geographically and emotionally.

One phoebe remained in the nest. It was gone when I went outside at 6:30 on July 20. Hopefully, it and the first two made it to the open space where there is cover.

Posted in Birds | 2 Comments

Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo

Posted on July 16, 2021 by Roger

I went to many competition rodeos as a kid with my parents, but the only rodeo I’ve seen in the past 30 years was just a performance and not very exciting. I knew Colorado Springs hosted a competition rodeo each year, but it took until this year before I got around to going. It was held at the Norris Penrose Event Center, a venue built specifically for rodeo.

We arrived an hour and a half early to look at the vendors and exhibits, which was about an hour longer than we needed. With time to kill, we decided to experience all the rodeo had to offer and headed for the BBQ buffet tent. The food was much better than we expected, and we didn’t regret the choice at all.

Our seats were on the west end, near the bronco and bull chutes, which put them further from the roping and steer wrestling chute. But that was OK because the roping and steer wrestling tended to come further into the arena. The bulls, in particular, tended to stick within a couple of feet of the chutes.

It was definitely a conservative crowd. The rodeo opened with a prayer by … I forget. He didn’t mention Christ, but he definitely prayed to the God of the Bible, thanking him for creation and asking for safety for the performers. He ended with “And if any steers or calves happen to get hurt, thank you for the meat.” Which I thought was great.

It was a pleasant night — a little hot for the first half-hour or so, but then becoming pretty much perfect. Many in the crowd showed little interest in actually watching the rodeo, getting up repeatedly to get pretzels or beer or whatever. This made for a constant parade past us, which was annoying. Neither of us understood more than a third of what the announcer said. Without further ado, here are some photos and video of the action.