Listing Through Life

I wanted to go birding, but the ground was covered with six inches of snow and the world was shut down from fear of Covid-19. In desperation, I spent a couple hours in the open space along Monument Branch. For the first hour, the sun was so bright and the snow so reflective that I thought I might go snow blind.

The birds were all the usual suspects. I unintentionally flushed a Great Blue Heron from the tiny pond down below the school. It flew up into a pine and hunkered down. I have plenty of photos of Great Blue Herons, so I didn’t make any particular effort, but when it allowed me to get within maybe 50 yards, I snapped off a few shots. One of them turned out pretty good.

The mottled background is snow and pines on the Rampart Range a couple miles away.

Spent two hours at Black Forest Regional Park today. They’ve cut down about 95% of the dead fire-burnt trees, making the park a lot less interesting to birds — and me. I was seeing very little until I got to a section of trees that survived the fire.

Red-breasted Nuthatch

Dark-eyed (Gray-headed Junco)

Red Crossbill

There was a flock of four (I think). I spotted two females, an adult male (above), and a first-year male that was mottled yellow and red. They were very quiet most of the time, but I managed to stick with them for about a quarter mile as they worked through the pines.

While the rest of the world stocked up on toilet paper, I went birding. I started in the tiny burg of Wetmore, south of Canon City. Lewis’s Woodpeckers have been spotted there recently. All I had to go on was that they were hanging about a dead cottonwood. Tuns out they were hanging about the first dead cottonwood I tried. It was hard to get a good  angle in the early morning light, but by walking a ways up a driveway shared by two houses, I managed some fair shots. They are a stunning bird.

I drove through Canon City to Tunnel Drive Trail. Have I mentioned yet that the day was perfect?

Other birders have seen Canyon Wrens, Rock Wrens, and Rufous-crowned Sparrows here this year. I only found the Canyon Wren, but I also spotted a high-soaring Golden Eagle. Here’s the wren.

Sage Thrashers have been reported from the base of Skyline Drive. I drove over the hill and parked on the east side. A Canyon Towhee flew to a nearby rock as I got out of my car.

A quarter mile away, I spotted a Sage Thrasher. Turns out this is a rare bird at this spot, but I never would have walked that trail if someone else hadn’t found it first. I happened to snap a shot just as it stepped off its perch into air to fly away.

Yesterday, when I was looking at a map to see how to get from Wetmore to Canon City, I spotted a restaurant called Big Burger World. I’m not sure how I’ve missed it for so long — it’s right in the middle of my local birding spots. I didn’t pay attention to the “big” part of the name and ended up with a bacon cheeseburger almost the size of my head. I only ate half of it. I know, right?

It was very tasty, and I will be back, but next time I’ll order the small.

I got home around 4:00 after a brief stop at King Soopers. In case you thought I was kidding about the toilet paper …

Anyway, I only saw 30 species on the day, but that included 6 new ones for the year, three of which were birds I was targeting. (The target birds I missed were Rock Wren, Rufous-crowned Sparrow, and Black Phoebe.)