First of all, no participants or spotting scopes were blown over and it didn’t rain or snow.  Additionally, on the positive side, there were only a few people visiting the park on a Saturday morning, so it didn’t feel so overrun.  

The main highlight of the morning was a female Rusty Blackbird foraging among the small rounded boulders along Clear Creek.  Rusties are the least well-known North American blackbirds, breeding in wet subarctic taiga forests along bogs, muskeg swamps, and beaver ponds, and wintering in the eastern United States south of the Great Lakes and occurring rarely in Colorado. 

The peak of waterfowl migration is roughly March through April.  So, start making good plans for getting out and greeting the arriving migrants.  

Cultivation of coffee in monoculture, sun-grown coffee plantations with emphasis on high-production has horrendous consequences for migratory songbirds.

The sky was clear, the wind was blowing quite a bit, and then the wind blew harder.  Fortunately, our first visit was to a home in a somewhat sheltered valley, and we ended up getting great looks at a slew of Cassin’s Finches and a few Rosy-Finches.

One of our first stops was at a new access point to the north side of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal at Chambers and 96th Ave.  The highlight here was getting to see four Northern Harriers swooping down and around a juvenile Bald Eagle, which was on the ground surrounded by prairie dogs.