Field Notes 1/28/12

A Great Day to See Birds of Prey

Our first sighting of the day was two great horned owls perched in the same tree along Alamosa County Road 108. Another vehicle of birders pulled up behind us and took photos of the owls with a camera much better than ours.

Traveling west on Stanley Road we spotted a raptor on top of a pole. Fortunately, the shoulder of the road was wide enough that we could pull over and study this bird, which we determined to be a prairie falcon.  The white eyebrow, white behind its eye and stubby beak were our main clues. Continuing west on Stanley Road we saw a bald eagle and 4-5 red-tailed hawks.

We entered the Rio Grande State Wildlife Area at the east gate and tromped through the snow for about a mile and saw magpies.

We then drove north on U.S. Hwy. 285 and at Saguache County Road N (the southern boundary of Russell Lakes State Wildlife Area) we saw a rough legged hawk (our first identification of this beautiful raptor). We were rewarded with several more sightings of rough-legged hawks around the wildlife area. We didn’t spot any birds at Davey Lake or Trites Lake, so we drove back to Johnson Lake. As we were approaching the frozen lake on foot a great blue heron took flight. A few seconds later we spotted a coyote on the frozen lake (it noticed us at the same time). We pondered this question – did we startle the great blue heron into flight or was it eluding predation by the coyote? We’d like to think we saved the life of the heron – much to the dismay of the hungry coyote.

Our field trip ended at the Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge where we saw a golden eagle in flight and several more red-tailed hawks. It was wishful thinking to hope that we might hear or see a sandhill crane so early in the season but it never hurts to be optimistic.

Field Notes 12/31/2011

The day broke clear and cool across the San Luis Valley.  With the orange in the east, Diane and I started out on the first day of our San Luis Valley Bird Watching Odyssey. Diane had wondered what our first bird sighting would be.  We were hoping for the magpie but it was the Eurasian collared dove.  Magpie was second. We headed out to the Great  Sand Dunes to take part in the Christmas Bird Count,  which is why we started  our odyssey on the last day of 2011.

On our way out to the Dunes we saw a golden eagle. We had seen the eagle on Christmas Day so we hoped for and got a  return sighting—with the San Luis Lakes hard by.   The eagle sighting was followed by three ravens flying and landing on a fence post.

At the Dunes we took the Denton Spring trail, an alluvial plain to the southeast of the Dunes.  We hiked along an open area rising to pinon/juniper habitat leading to a line of tall firs and pines along a  fault where the trickling  spring emerged.

We saw:     

A single scrub jay  with a long tail,  a black capped chickadee singing and flying away, a robin high on a tree top, a Townsend’s solitaire--hard to see-- blending in at the springs.

Squirrel


A single magpie heard and glimpsed in the distance, many mountain chickadees flying through pinon pines, we were surprised by  a red-shafted flicker  (we are later reminded by an expert that they are now called northern flickers), a huge flock of crows in an impressive flyover,  a pinon jay is the last bird of our count.

On the trip home we turned down some side roads and saw a red-tailed hawk in a tree holding on in the wind,  a little flock of brown birds that turned out to be  horned larks, and as we drove down Highway 17  we were thrilled to see a bald eagle flying into the wind.

As we pulled into Alamosa we saw a town bird--the rock dove, better known as a pigeon.

A great bird watching day.