I have five days until school starts. There are a lot of rare birds in Colorado right now, so I decided to try and see as many as possible in the first week of the year! Day one – New Year’s Day.
Trilby Road Gyrfalcon Stakeout
Today, the rare bird reports (cobirds Google Group and eBird) took us to Fort Collins birding destinations. Our first target was the Gyrfalcon near Larimer County Landfill. He has been seen for the past two winters at this location but has evaded us on all 11 of our previous trips to find him. Today was no exception. Despite searching for 4 hours the Gyr never made an appearance. Even though the falcon was not present we saw other fascinating birds.
Grandview Cemetery
Our next stop was Grandview Cemetery in Fort Collins. Our target here was the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. After a few hours of searching we finally located him. Thanks to Joe Mammoser for helping us find the bird; I had met Joe last year looking for the Gyrfalcon and it was great to see him again.
Union Reservoir
After successfully seeing the Sapsucker we drove to Union Reservoir in Longmont to look for two Tundra Swans. The Swans were nowhere to be found. However, there was a very friendly Kestrel with freshly caught dinner.
While driving home we saw a truly incredible spectacle. Near the town of Frederick we saw two gigantic groups of geese. The first flock was made of multiple connected flying ‘V’s of Canadian Geese spanning the evening sky numbering well over 5000 birds. The second flock was another 3000 Canadians on the ground in a corn field with more geese landing to join them as we drove by. Unfortunately, it was too dark for decent pictures by that time. An amazing site!!
What a terrific New Year’s Day to start 2020!
Camera: Nikon COOLPIX P1000, SONY Cyber-shot DSC-HX200V
Optics: Celestron