April Birding

Susan and I woke up fairly early and she said, "let's go down to the lake and do some spring birding."

So, without any coffee or breakfast, we just grabbed the camera and binoculars and went down to the lake. In just a couple of hours we easily observed 18 species:

• American Robin
• Black-capped Chickadee
• Canada Goose
• Common Goldeneye
• Common Grackle
• Common Raven
• Great-horned Owl (not at Lake Estes, but in town)
• House Sparrow
• House Wren
• Mountain Chickadee
• Osprey
• Pine Siskin
• Ruby-crowned Kinglet
• Song Sparrow
• Townsend's Solitaire
• Turkey Vulture
• White-crowned Sparrow
• Yellow-rumped Warbler

We were hoping to see the Wilson's Snipe, but didn't. We did run in to our local birding friend Gary Matthews.

We also saw a lot of post-flood heavy-machinery action around the lake. Here are a few pictures from the morning.

Townsend's Solitaire

Managing river flow near the lake

Common Goldeneye take-off

Osprey fly-by

Canada Goose on-the-wing

White-crowned sparrow

Canada Goose portrait

Making small rocks from big rocks

Yellow-rumped Warbler

And the rump... :-)

The Stanley Hotel

Great-horned Owl in its nest

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

Lenticular cloud over Twin Sisters (taken April 9th, 2014 at 8:08am)