We had to push off our usual second Saturday bird walk by a day due to our first snow storm of the season, but I’m so glad we did! It was a perfect bluebird day with sunny skies and a ton of amazing birds!
Lagerman Reservoir is always great for waterfowl and raptors in the fall and winter and it provided the perfect venue for trying out some of our spotting scopes, namely Swarovski’s ATS 65 and Opticron’s new MM4 77. Both scopes provide crystal clear viewing of distant birds. In fact, they were instrumental in determining that the raptor we saw perched out on a fencepost was a Ferruginous Hawk rather than a Red-tailed Hawk. What told us it was the larger Ferruginous Hawk rather than the more common Red-tail, even from far away? The extensive white on the bird’s chest and belly, unbroken by any dark speckling or “belly band,” pale feathers on the head rather than a solid brown head, and a flash of rusty color on the shoulder.
Another special bird of the day was a juvenile Golden Eagle. We could tell the bird was a juvenile Golden Eagle and not a young Bald Eagle by the neat, white patches on the underside of its wings and the way it soared with its wings in a slight V (dihedral). Juvenile Bald Eagles are a messy mix of white and dark brown and soar with their wings flat. While Golden Eagles tend to nest on cliffs or bluffs, they can be found in open country when not breeding, especially in the winter.
For ducks we had quite a few, with the most common being Green-winged Teal, Ruddy Ducks, and Northern Pintails. We even had a late shorebird: a Long-billed Dowitcher, a medium-sized shorebird that passes through Colorado in the spring on its way to breed in the arctic and then back through again in the fall to winter in the southern US and Mexico. Their feeding behavior, which is sometimes described as like a sewing machine, allows them to probe into mud and sand with their long bills in search of invertebrates and mollusks.
With 30 species for the morning, the walk was a great success! We hope you can join us on a future walk!
Lagerman Agricultural Preserve–Lagerman Reservoir, Boulder, Colorado, US
Nov 10, 2024 9:00 AM – 11:50 AM
30 species
Cackling Goose 70
Canada Goose 20
Northern Shoveler 2
American Wigeon 8
Mallard 10
Northern Pintail 25
Green-winged Teal 35
Redhead 15
Ring-necked Duck 4
Lesser Scaup 5
Bufflehead 8
Ruddy Duck 40
Rock Pigeon (Feral Pigeon) 1
American Coot 50
Killdeer 6
Long-billed Dowitcher 1
Ring-billed Gull 4
Eared Grebe 2
Golden Eagle 1
Red-tailed Hawk 3
Ferruginous Hawk 1
American Kestrel 1
Prairie Falcon 1
American Crow 1
Horned Lark 4
European Starling 30
American Pipit 1
American Goldfinch 1
Western Meadowlark 1
Red-winged Blackbird 5
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