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Birding in June around Denver (1 Viewer)

Nick French

Well-known member
I will be in Denver for two days in June and looking for some suggestions for good sites.

I will spend some time at Pawnee as this has several lifers for me - Lazuli & Lark Bunting, Cassin's Sparrow, Mountain Plovers and Chestnut-collared and McCowen's Longspurs. Any suggestions or recent info as to the best spots for these?

I was also thinking of going to either Golden Gate Canyon or Rock Mountain Parks to look for Townsend's Solitaire, Townsend's Warbler and Brown-capped Rosy-finch. Again any advice, suggested sites or recent info would be very welcome.

Cheers
Nick
 
I will be in Denver for two days in June and looking for some suggestions for good sites.

I will spend some time at Pawnee as this has several lifers for me - Lazuli & Lark Bunting, Cassin's Sparrow, Mountain Plovers and Chestnut-collared and McCowen's Longspurs. Any suggestions or recent info as to the best spots for these?

I was also thinking of going to either Golden Gate Canyon or Rock Mountain Parks to look for Townsend's Solitaire, Townsend's Warbler and Brown-capped Rosy-finch. Again any advice, suggested sites or recent info would be very welcome.

Cheers
Nick

Nick, when will you be there? I too will be in Colorado (approx 19th-25th) based primarily in Colorado Springs with time for one or two days' birding.

Have not yet done much research yet but would be happy to share gen if/when I find anything out, and even driving/birding if the dates work (though Pawnee is even further from Colorado Springs).

Would love to see various grouse sp. but fear it's too late in the season to have nailed down sites, and so I'd tentatively thought about Rosy-finches and Ptarmigan, and/or Longspurs.

Cheers, Ian
 
Hey Ian
Just before you - will fly in on 17 June and out on 19 June. I am in the US for work - using up some of my air miles to get somewhere good to bird. I am also trying to get some info from a Colorado bird discussion group (http://www.cfo-link.org/) but I have not yet been given permission to post on their COBirds blog.

Will certainly pass on any info I get, but it may just be too late for you for me to share my trip results before you fly.
Cheers
Nick
 
Colorado birding info

I have just retruned from my trip and had two fairly full days birding and saw some good stuff on Mt Evans and surrounds, and on the Pawnee Nat. Grasslands. Here is a followup in case anyone else stumbles across this thread.

I had trouble finding high quality gen and found the following sites:

http://www.cfo-link.org/

and

http://www.coloradobirdingtrail.com/

which gave some general info but not really the specific stuff you need for a two day targetted trip. However the day before my first full day birding I finally hit the jackpot with this site:

http://coloradobirdingsociety.net16.net/

which was a goldmine of up-to-date info. the website owners answered my email within hours and I was/am truly grateful for all their help. It may not be the slickest looking website but the key stuff is there. Highly recommended.

Cheers, Ian
 
I will be in Denver for two days in June and looking for some suggestions for good sites.

I will spend some time at Pawnee as this has several lifers for me - Lazuli & Lark Bunting, Cassin's Sparrow, Mountain Plovers and Chestnut-collared and McCowen's Longspurs. Any suggestions or recent info as to the best spots for these?

I was also thinking of going to either Golden Gate Canyon or Rock Mountain Parks to look for Townsend's Solitaire, Townsend's Warbler and Brown-capped Rosy-finch. Again any advice, suggested sites or recent info would be very welcome.

Cheers
Nick

Hi Nick

I got back from a 2-week birding trip a few weeks ago and managed to see all the grassland species you are after plus Townsend's solitaire and rosy finch.

If you get hold of a copy of the Delorme Altas for Colorado it will make getting around the grasslands easier and I can give you directions using it. We got a cheap copy from Amazon.

Lark buntings were everywhere so you shouldn't have any troubles with them. We were lucky and got 3 mountain plovers to the south of the main grassland area near Cornish but we also got an adult with chick in the main area. We had them on CR114 (Delorme page 21, C5) near the experimental range. From the 85, go past the range, through a large dip in the road to a green grazed area with 2 cattle grids on the other side to the right of the road (ca2-3 miles). They may not be still there but there were loads of McCowans longspurs in the same area. We only had brief views of chestnut-collared at the 85/CR114 junction. We had cassins sparrows on the fences along the birding trail.

We had rosy-finches along Trail Ridge road in the Rocky Mountain National Park. They were not easy as there was still lots of snow but we did see them by scanning the scree slopes from the laybys - we had 5 feeding close to the road on one day. I haven't got any specific sites for the solitaire but we did bump into a few on our trip.

Hope that helps

Paul
 
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