The Dog Days of Summer

I returned home to Colorado on July 9, 2023, after a short but successful trip to South Florida. Mid-July in Colorado is hot (but not as hot as Florida!). Some years are bone dry and bird nesting activity finishes early. Summer mornings with no bird song are eery. Fortunately, this summer in Colorado was wet, and fields that normally turned brown in July remained green. Daily thunder showers helped keep the insect population high which in turn allowed for many bird species to attempt to raise second broods. This gave me an opportunity to look for nesting species in Colorado that I still needed to find for my Biggest Year effort. I also took advantage of my time in my home county to look for species that I needed for my Larimer County year list. I normally would finish each year among the top three ranked birders in Larimer, but this year I was birding mostly away from home and I had fallen well behind in the local rankings. 

One local species that would be new for my Biggest Year was Baird’s Sparrow. In late July, 2015, a population of summering Baird’s Sparrow was discovered at Soapstone Prairie Natural Area about 20 miles north of Fort Collins near the Colorado-Wyoming border. This was 500 miles south of their normal breeding area in Montana. The following year more territorial males were discovered and breeding was confirmed in 2017.  Since then some birds had returned each year, although not always in places accessible to the public. They were sometimes found along a hiking trail closed to the public until July 15, ostensibly to protect nesting Mountain Plover and other grassland breeders from human disturbance. In 2023, as of July 10, no Baird’s Sparrows had been reported. Official monitoring efforts by the City of Fort Collins and Bird Conservancy of the Rockies (BCR) had been discontinued so the sparrow’s status in off-limits locations was unknown. Therefore, I made plans with Fort Collins birder Josh Bruening to visit Soapstone Prairie on July 15, the day that the closure of the Plover Loop Trail would be removed. 

 

Interestingly, new data from research ornithologists at BCR suggested that the Baird’s Sparrow population in Colorado becomes active in late summer following breeding in the core territory further north. What if I wait until July 15 and then fail to find any Baird’s Sparrow in Colorado? I could search on the wintering grounds in Arizona in December but I’ve had trouble finding these birds in winter. I looked at my Birdseye App on my iPhone for recent sightings of Baird’s Sparrow and found the closest one to be in extreme Northwestern South Dakota near the town of Buffalo. One distant singing bird was heard a few days earlier by a BCR field technician. This detection occurred at the southern edge of the breeding range where the birds are considered rare. I loaded up my Honda CRV with water, black cherries and peanut M&Ms. I convinced Maribel to keep me company by agreeing to visit Mt. Rushmore National Monument on the return trip. Round trip mileage from Fort Collins was estimated at 1300. We started rolling on the morning of July 12 and drove all day through Wyoming, Nebraska and South Dakota. As we approached Baird’s Sparrow country that evening, we began to see Upland Sandpiper.  I photographed several “Uppies” beside the road, documenting this species for the first time in 2023. I had heard one migrating overhead in Galveston, TX, in early May but these were the first I had seen. We also spotted several Short-eared Owl flying around. One came close to me and vocalized, providing an opportunity for me to record audio. It was too dark for photography.  I had seen a Short-eared Owl in February near Greeley, CO, but had not documented it. Unfortunately there was no sign of the Baird’s Sparrow. 

After spending the night at the one motel in Buffalo, SD, we drove up and down a ten-mile stretch of road where the Baird’s Sparrow had been reported. Birds were plentiful. A couple Brewer’s Sparrow were flagged as rare in eBird.  Chestnut-collared Longspur juveniles were feeding on grit in the dirt road. A family of Sharp-tailed Grouse foraged just off the roadside. Grasshopper Sparrow was ubiquitous. A couple of Bobolink were unexpected. But again, no Baird’s Sparrow. I looked up other locations where Baird’s Sparrow had been detected historically. A parallel road a mile south had numerous pins for historical sightings, all several years old. After about five miles on that road, I heard the familiar tinkling of the Baird’s Sparrow song and audio-recorded it for documentation (Biggest Year-Bird number 725). I spent thirty minutes trying to see it but never did. Some birds just don’t want to be seen. 

We followed a scenic route back to Fort Collins, stopping to appreciate Mount Rushmore and the beautiful pine forests of the Black Hills region. 

Back in Fort Collins, Josh Bruening arrived at my house at 5:15 AM on Saturday, July 15. He transferred his hybrid mountain/road bike to my bike rack, and we zipped north to Soapstone Prairie Natural Area, arriving at 6 AM. Nine miles of dirt trails and five hours later, I put my binoculars on a sparrow perched up on a post along the trail and was pleased to see an adult Baird’s Sparrow. We watched it fly to the ground, gather several grubs in its bill and bring them to another adult partially concealed by grasses. A nest? Perhaps. Eventually the male sang a few times. Photos and audio from this pair of Baird’s Sparrow can be found here: https://ebird.org/checklist/S144654031. We finished up our loop ride several hours later after riding over twenty shadeless miles! Other highlights of this epic ride included dozens of juvenile Thick-billed Longspurs and a Prairie Falcon. The falcon was hunting a Lark Bunting which impressively used Josh and me as human shields in order to evade the speedy predator. The falcon came within feet of me and within inches of Josh in its pursuit of the unlucky Lark Bunting. What is lacked in luck it had in smarts, using a human shield to evade the powerful Falcon. It would live at least another day in the dog-eat-dog world on the prairie. 

Because of the upcoming Colorado Field Ornithologists Convention, July  19-23, there was insufficient time for a major out-of-state chase trip, so I  focused on local birding opportunities in Colorado. The number of Colorado breeding birds that would be new for my Biggest Year effort was countable on one hand. Cassia Crossbill, Black Swift and Yellow Rail were the only ones. 

Yellow Rail does not normally breed in Colorado and until 2022, hadn’t been observed during the breeding season for over a century. Then in mid July, 2022, Eric DeFonso discovered two singing males at Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge in the San Luis Valley. Probable third and fourth birds were reported in the following days suggesting that a small population existed. Normally these birds nest in central Canada but there is a small satellite population in northern California. The San Luis Valley lies on a direct path from the wintering grounds on the Texas coast to the population in California so perhaps these birds discovered the San Luis Valley during their migration. Breeding was never confirmed however. 

The Yellow Rail had not been reported in 2023 but Cole Wild, Kathy Kay and I decided it was worth exploring the area, which is severely underbirded, especially during the dog days of summer. So we got started early on July 16, heading first to the Lodgepole Pine forests of Gunnison County near Cottonwood Pass where a few days earlier Eric DeFonso had reported Cassia Crossbill. Finding only Red Crossbill, we continued on to Monte Vista, arriving after dark. We spent most of the night listening and playing tapes for Yellow Rail without success. Sora and Virginia Rails were abundant. We ended the night at Zapata Falls in the Sangre de Cristo mountains. We hiked the half-mile trail to the falls before dawn and counted about 7 Black Swift  (726) exiting the falls area a few minutes later. We then returned to eastern Gunnison County where we met up with Adrian Lakin at Taylor Park. He and I continued the unsuccessful search for Cassia Crossbill while Cole and Kathy chased and ticked a locally rare Western Gull at Antero Reservoir in Park County that had been found a couple days earlier by Mark Peterson. I returned home late Monday evening with one day to rest before the Colorado Field Ornithologists Annual Convention.