At dawn in the Bear Creek Greenbelt:
Great Horned Owl
A little later in the morning, at a nest a mile or so away, high up in a cottonwood, the sun bright behind:
Great Horned Owl and owlets
A Spanish-speaking gentleman was also taking a picture with his phone. “Halcón?” he asked me. I shook my head. I didn’t know how to say owl in Spanish, and he didn’t understand the English word. So I made a hooting noise. “Ah! ” he said. “Búho.”
Today I saw 32 species of birds in the Bear Creek Greenbelt. Here’s a sampling:
Blue-winged Teal (female)
Mourning Dove
American Coot
Great Horned Owl
Cedar Waxwing
And I saw Canada Goose goslings for the first time this year!
Canada Geese
Canada Goose with goslings
On a lunch walk in the Bear Creek Greenbelt I saw a Cooper’s Hawk–the male, it looks like–on the nest:
Cooper’s Hawk
Owlet
Great Horned Owl and owlet
Great Horned Owl
As we headed back home this Harris’s Sparrow caught my eye:
Harris’s Sparrow
On a walk during lunch in the Bear Creek Greenbelt I saw five Blue-winged Teals and one Cinnamon Teal.
Blue-winged Teal (female)
Cinnamon Teal (male)
I also saw an Eastern Phoebe:
Eastern Phoebe
After work my better half and I walked the dog in the greenbelt. We saw four White-crowned Sparrows, including this one:
White-crowned Sparrow
Mama Great Horned Owl stepped out of the nest for a stretch.
Great Horned Owl and owlet
The second owlet was at the east end of the nest:
Owlet
More highlights from Walden:
Yellow-headed Blackbird
A dark-morph Swainson’s Hawk:
Swainson’s Hawk
Swainson’s Hawk
Great Horned Owlet in Bear Creek Lake Park
Red-tailed Hawk in the Bear Creek Greenbelt
Great Horned Owl in the Bear Creek Greenbelt
Highlights from the trip to Walden:
Greater Sage-Grouse lek (center)
Greater Sage-Grouse lek (center)
Greater Sage-Grouse lek (center)
Face-off
Greater Sage-Grouse
Greater Sage-Grouse
Moose
Bighorn Sheep
Pronghorn
Cassin’s Finches (at the Moose Visitor Center)
At the Arapaho National Wildlife auto tour, there were a couple of smaller mammals:
White-tailed prairie dog
Wyoming ground squirrel
This morning a few White-crowned Sparrows showed up in our back yard, along with a Harris’s Sparrow.
Harris’s Sparrow
In the afternoon a friend and I drove to North Park for a weekend of wildlife viewing. Here was the welcome committee as we approached Walden:
Pronghorn
In the Bear Creek Greenbelt muskrats are making themselves more visible.
Muskrat
Here’s the female Cooper’s Hawk tucking into a meal, the male standing behind her.
Cooper’s Hawks
On an early lunch walk in the Bear Creek Greenbelt I got a pretty good look at one of the owlets:
Great Horned Owl with owlet
Today I took off work and joined a Denver Field Ornithologists trip to Weld County, led by David Suddjian and Diane Roberts. We saw over 70 species, including male Sharp-tailed Grouse performing in a lek, a couple of Mountain Plovers, numerous Black-necked Stilts and American Avocets, and this delightful surprise:
Black-throated Gray Warbler