ACES Morning Birding at Hallam Lake 06/16/26

We began with views of one of the adult ospreys nesting on the platform above Hallam Lake, and birded our way around the Post Office Trail to a point where we could view the nest on a level plane. On the way, we spent time watching yellow-rumped warblers, broad-tailed hummingbirds, northern house wrens, mountain chickadees, and pygmy nuthatches foraging in the foliage on both sides of the trail. Violet-green swallows were another highlight as they fed overhead and carried nesting material to openings in the eave of a nearby building. A couple of participants spotted the head of a chick in the osprey nest, giving us some excitement as this was the first visual confirmation of at least one chick. Inside the preserve, while watching many small birds in surrounding trees, we noticed a bull moose with amazing velvet antlers eating willows on the hillside below the former Paepcke homesite, a comfortable distance away across the pond. Other highlights this morning included spotted sandpipers, Lewis’s woodpeckers, eclipse plumage mallards, and views of nesting herons in spruce trees above the river. As we left the preserve, we put scoped on the osprey nest one more time and everyone got to see the chick for a fully satisfying confirmation of nesting success! Join us tomorrow for a Birding and Conversation field trip to explore impacts and implications of the Douglas fir beetle outbreak and other changes in local forests as they relate to bird communities that inhabit them.