Morning Birding Species List | June 9, 2015

---

Tuesday, June 9, 2015, 6AM – 9AM
Weather: sunny and clear
Location: Hallam Lake and North Star Nature Preserve

Canada Goose Mallard Ring-necked Duck Great Blue Heron Osprey Spotted Sandpiper Broad-tailed Hummingbird Belted Kingfisher Northern Flicker Warbling Vireo

Steller’s Jay Black-billed Magpie American Crow Tree Swallow Violet-green Swallow Black-capped Chickadee Mountain Chickadee Brown Creeper House Wren American Dipper

Ruby-crowned Kinglet American Robin MacGillivray’s Warbler Yellow Warbler Song Sparrow Lincoln’s Sparrow Red-winged Blackbird Brown-headed Cowbird Pine Siskin

Comments: 
This beautiful summer morning was truly exciting! Our mini-lesson on bird song prepared us to take in the 360 degree auditory bird world during the dawn chorus. We learned the songs/calls of yellow warbler, song sparrow, kingfisher, flicker, and ruby-crowned kinglet. A MacGillivray’s warbler gave us a nice, long look while it sang along the Forest Trail, providing us with an excellent ‘Golden Moment’ (seeing and hearing a bird at the same time). We saw dippers on Hallam Lake as well as on the over-banking Roaring Fork River, and studied tree and violet-green swallows over the lake. 

The excitement continued at North Star where we were greeted by three small fuzzy coyote pups (pictured above) that tumbled out of the grass playing in front of us. We watched them for a few minutes from a respectful distance until they responded to an adult coyote’s barks and howls from the hillside of Richmond Ridge, disappearing into the vegetation and heading, presumably, back to their parents/den. Meanwhile, a couple of elk ambled in the meadows to the east, and we looked at mallards and a ring-necked duck through the scope on the extensive open water… an uncommon occurrence of the river’s spring flooding which is so ecologically beneficial. Chorus frogs sang. An osprey flew over twice, circling low directly above us. It was a great treasure hunt this morning, leaving us buzzing from the special nature moments we experienced… the rewards of quietly observing nature and being in tune with the early morning natural world!

~ Rebecca Weiss, ACES Bird Guide