Morning Birding at Rock Bottom Ranch Species List | September 17, 2019

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Tuesday, September 17, 2019, 7:30AM – 10:30AM
Weather: Mostly sunny
Location: Rock Bottom Ranch & Rio Grande Trail

Species Identified

Canada Goose Mallard Wild Turkey Rock Pigeon Eurasian Collared-Dove Great Blue Heron Turkey Vulture Lewis’s Woodpecker Northern Flicker Western Wood-Pewee Warbling Vireo Steller’s Jay Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jay Black-billed Magpie American Crow Swallow sp. Black-capped Chickadee Mountain Chickadee White-breasted Nuthatch Ruby-crowned Kinglet American Robin Gray Catbird Cedar Waxwing House Finch Pine Siskin American Goldfinch Spotted Towhee Chipping Sparrow Song Sparrow Dark-eyed Junco Red-winged Blackbird Virginia’s Warbler Yellow-rumped Warbler Black-throated Gray Warbler Wilson’s Warbler

 

Comments:

Today’s mini-lesson emphasized the mixed fall flocks of warblers, chickadees, kinglets, and vireos, and we saw this phenomenon in many places along our route, especially in the mixed shrubs with grassy openings. We enjoyed the abundance of birds, gathering in groups and shifting positions to try to get views of them as they darted between shrubs and moved among foliage. Highlights were the warblers that we were able to study in order to compare their unique fall field marks, and a wild turkey that had flushed up into a cottonwood tree at our turn-around point on the Rio Grande Trail. Turkey vultures were circling in thermals over the valley in groups of a dozen or more, perhaps gathering and traveling on their southward migration. Join us next Tuesday at Hallam Lake for more fall migration birding!

~ Rebecca Weiss, ACES Bird Guide 

 

Photo by Craig Turpin, Aspen Daily News