Eat more cookies

I like national forests even better than national parks – fewer cars and people in the way of my birding.

On Day 2 of my Front Range birding, I teamed up with pals Paul and Amanda Rodewald in Fort Collins, CO and headed west on Route 14 along the Poudre River Valley and into the Roosevelt National Forest. I discovered the Poudre (pronounced “POO-der”) a few years ago when I was in Fort Collins for a conference. A friend and I skipped out one afternoon and just drove west until we got into the mountains. I was determined to get my life American Dipper then, and I did. It was diving and bobbing amid rock, ice, and snow (this was January). Farther up the mountain, we pulled over and I started “tooting” like a Northern Pygmy Owl. After a minute or so, TWO pygmy owls came in, and so did Red-breasted and Pygmy nuthatches, Mountain Chickadees, and Townsend’s Solitaires.

On this sunny day in August, I was hoping we’d find some similar flocks, some good migrants along the river, more dipper-viewing opportunities, and perhaps get another shot at ptarmigans if we got high enough.

We started in the foothills along the river, and pulled off several times in search of dippers. Our first stop produced a singing Canyon Wren – always a treat! We were also serenaded by a Western Wood-Pewee, and eventually learned why he was hanging around us: we were close to some fledglings!

Other riverside stops produced delights like Western Tanager, MacGillivray’s Warbler, and my lifer Lazuli Bunting. She was pretty bland – a late August female – but diagnostic as a Lazuli nonetheless.

At a Forest Service rest station up the road, we were treated to multiple hummingbirds – mostly Broad-tailed (another lifer!) – crowded on the feeders at the station entrance. They were fun, especially the males’ trilling wing flight rattle.

We took a couple of short hikes away from the road and uncovered things like Cordilleran Flycatcher, Hairy Woodpecker, and some moose dung. But we never got into a great flock of little birds, and my owl tooting didn’t deliver. Oh well . . .

Our ultimate destination that day was Laramie, Wyoming, so eventually we had to give up on so much time consuming birding and put some miles behind us. At Walden, we gassed up and started heading north toward Wyoming. On the way, we toured the Arapaho National Wildlife Refuge and found some great birds there: Golden Eagle, American White Pelican, Brewer’s Sparrow, and lots of those birds called Pronghorns:

Brewer’s Sparrow

From there we scooted down into Laramie just in time to freshen up before the first mixer opening the AOU annual meeting.

Here’s a representative list of the day’s birds:

american dipper
western wood-pewee
american goldfinch
canyon wren
american robin
spotted towhee
common (red-shafted) flicker
pine siskin
rufous hummingbird
american kestrel
western tanager
mountain chickadee
red-tailed hawk
hermit thrush
MacGillivray’s Warbler
yellow warbler
song sparrow
chipping sparrow
brewer’s sparrow
brewer’s blackbird
lark sparrow
horned lark
hairy woodpecker
common raven
mountain chickadee
cedar waxwing
brown creeper
common nighthawk
broad-tailed hummingbird
lazuli bunting
mallard
gadwall
lesser scaup
blue-winged teal
canada goose
American white pelican
white-faced ibis
great blue heron
green heron
american coot
eared grebe
pied-billed grebe
killdeer
greater yellowlegs
wilson’s snipe
wilson’s phalarope
mourning dove
cordilleran flycatcher
belted kingfisher
black-billed magpie
sage thrasher
violet-green swallow
savannah sparrow