Nope, haven’t done it yet. But I am up to 91 life birds and it’s just half way through September. Fall migrants should be passing through soon and from what I read many of our winter waterfowl community are headed this way. I drove through Rocky Mountain National Park a few weeks ago and saw 5 year birds (Common Raven, Pinyon Jay, Steller’s Jay, Gray Jay, Clark’s Nutcracker) plus one of them, the Clark’s Nutcracker, was a life bird. And then two days ago I was taking an early morning walk around the Riverbend Ponds Natural Area and saw quite a few birds, among them a Pied-billed Grebe and a Lark Sparrow. At first I thought the Grebe was a frog staring at me from the water because all that was showing was the bill and the eyes but then, like a surfacing submarine, this duck body began to rise. Truly bizarre. I stood very still while it swam around for a minute but the second I took a step it sank back under. I must admit, it’s the first bird that’s made me laugh out loud. Apparently this is very common behavior for this elusive water bird.
Here are some of my Rocky Mountain National Park bird pictures:
Common Raven hanging out at 12,000 ft elevation
Magpie on fence at 9500 ft.
(see more RMNP photos here at my flickr site)
and the Lark Sparrow:
Lark Sparrow
Lark Sparrow
and that silly Pied-billed Grebe:
sneaky sneaky grebe
sneaks out into the open
then back into the weeds
(see more Riverbend Ponds photos)
