Four days until school starts! We chased Denver metro rarities for two days, all within an hour of the house. Because of all the rare birds we had a couple of long days chasing them from sunrise to sunset.
For those of you who are curious, “rare birds” are birds that appear well outside their normal range (like ocean birds wandering inland or birds from east of the Mississippi showing up along the Rocky Mountains). Many birders want to expand their life list (total species ever seen). The easiest way to do this without traveling to other parts of the country is chasing local rarities. There is also something incredibly thrilling about spotting a super rare bird, for example an Arctic bird in Colorado.
January 2
Bear Creek Lake Park
We started our day looking for the Pacific Wren that has been at Bear Creek Lake Park for more than two weeks. This is a very special little bird. He is extremely rare in Colorado, representing the first record in Jefferson County. Certainly one of our metro rarities! Our experience today was quite different than when we saw him on Christmas Day. He was hiding in cattails near the river and would only sit in view for a second or two before disappearing back into the reeds. You can read more about our first time chasing the Pacific Wren here.
Morrison
After locating the Wren, we headed into the town of Morrison. A Golden-crowned Sparrow was seen at a private feeder in town. Although we waited for 45 minutes the sparrow refused to make an appearance. We did see other cool birds at the feeder.
Chatfield State Park
Our next stop of the day was Chatfield Lake State Park. Our targets here were White-winged Scoter and Pacific Loon. Both birds have been here for almost a month. They are normally found on ocean waters and rarely appear inland.
South Platte Reservoir
After seeing the rare bids at Chatfield, we went across the street to South Platte Reservoir. After scoping the reservoir for 30 minutes Dad spotted our target, a pair of Long-tailed Ducks.
Lake Arbor
As the sun began to sink behind the mountains, we arrived at Lake Arbor hoping to see the Brant that we saw a few weeks ago. This is another rare bird for the state of Colorado which we were hoping to see again. Despite scoping the hordes of Canada Geese, we could not find the Brant.
January 3
Lake Arbor (again)
After our unsuccessful search for the Brant on the second of January we arrived at sunrise to try again, continuing our search for metro rarities. We were greeted by almost 2000 geese on the small unfrozen portion of the lake. After an hour of scoping we finally located the Brant. Within 15 minutes he flew away to forage in areas unknown.
Aurora Reservoir
Next we headed east. Our target bird was the Yellow-billed Loon at Aurora Reservoir. We walked along the entire east side of the reservoir (about four miles) and scoped from the west side. We found two Common Loons and a very distant Yellow-billed Loon. We were unable to photograph the Yellow-billed. A surprise bonus bird was a Red-necked Grebe, but again, the wind made it impossible to photograph.
As we drove home Mom spotted a Snow Goose in a flock of Canada Geese which was our sixth goose species of the day! Colorado normally only gets five species of geese (the Brant is rare) so seeing six in one day is quite unusual!
Awesome but very tiring couple days of chasing metro rarities!
Camera: Nikon COOLPIX P1000, SONY Cyber-shot DSC-HX200V
Optics: Celestron
