Pawnee National Grasslands Part II

After we left the great but very bland-looking flock of longspurs, we finally came up on where the real Rhynchophanes action was. Hands shaking and drool forming at the corners of my mouth (not Billy's), we pulled up to several male McCown's Longspurs and all their black-bibbed glory. The females and juveniles were immensely pleasing, but these are the birds I was really hoping to see...I have no explanation for this, but I still remember the grainy image of one from an old Audubon field guide my parents had when I was a kid. This was a bird, for some reason, that I really needed to see...not just this species, this plumage. Why the mind holds on to things like this, I don't know, but as a badly-addicted bird junkie, I have always appreciated birds that melt the face and birds that have no such power, but can be equally as fascinating.

Male McCown's casually paraded around on the ground next to the car while others performed their flight displays in the distance. Everything was coming together...it was all finally happening, as they say down in Austin.

I'm trying to find the right word to describe a male McCown's...it's not a crippling bird by any means, nor should it be relegated to LBJ status (*shivers*...can we banish that phrase forever please?). It belongs in that warm, very comfortable realm between having a subtle beauty (this bird is not subtle though) and possessing what la gente consider true, undeniable beauty. I think I will dub this bird, now having seen them well, as impactful. When I next return to the prairie, longspurs will very much be on the brain.

Though it is tempting to linger in a MCLO daze, I can't avoid posting a Horned Lark photo, sorry. There are hella at PNG, which should surprise absolutely no one. I suppose a Horned Lark can leave an impression as well, and I won't deny them that, but the impression tends to fade after seeing thousands and thousands of them. Still a mellow bird though, and the lark is a known friend of the longspur and the Snow Bunting, which I have always been grateful for.

Longspurs are famous for their ability to frustrate observers, but this juvenile Chestnut-collared (year bird!) had yet to learn how to skulk and give fleeting, frustrating views. It did take me by surprise though...as I said before, very few birders are well-versed with juvenile longspurs and I was utterly unprepared to separate juvenile Chestnut-collared from juvenile McCown's. Luckily I had my wits about me enough to realize this longspur was not like the others I had been seeing.

This bird has a smallish bill and more of a face pattern than the McCown's (a very blank-faced bird, even as juveniles), and lacked any sort of scaliness in the upperparts. Much like a fine whiskey is best appreciated by the ardent and experienced drinker, juvenile longspurs are best enjoyed by the veteran (and thus, deranged) birder. Had I seen this creature as a beginning birder, I would have been struck down with fear and confusion...longspurs are not for the faint of heart.

I've got to post another male Lark Bunting, I have no choice in the matter. This is a bird for all.

After finishing up the usual tour route, it was time to fall back on listservs and eBird...we had not yet seen Mountain Plovers, and that was completely unacceptable. A spot seemingly in the middle of nowhere had many plover reports in the preceding weeks, so we barged our rental car down some questionable dirt roads and made it to the spot...a giant, sprawling prairie dog town, the biggest I had ever seen. This "town" had it all...Lark Buntings, longspurs, a Burrowing Owl, a Ferruginous Hawk loafing on the ground, and a great many frolicking prairie dogs.

Finding the Pastoral Plovers was easy, though this bird tried to make it difficult by crouching behind the spoils of some prairie dog burrows.

As with McCown's Longspurs, Prairie Plovers are shortgrass prairie specialists, and have a very similar breeding range. Many of them spend their summers in the company of prairie dogs, but the majority of the population drifts over to California during the winter months. Since Agrarian Plover is considered a California "specialty", it was especially novel to connect with them far away, at such a great refuge for grassland wildlife.

After leaving the magnificent prairie dog town behind, we headed west to bird a stretch of County Road 45, which is northwest of the standard auto loop and best accessed from Highway 85...after all, as The Great Ornithologist Felonious Jive says, "Middle of afternoon is best for see the most good bird".  This is another birdy section of PNG, and we finally managed track down some adult male Chestnut-collared Longspurs, which is arguably the most astonishing-looking prairie bird of them all. Great success...very nice!

On the last day of the Colorado trip we checked out some of the natural areas in Fort Collins, and bagged a couple year birds (Baird's Sandpipers and Franklin's Gulls) on the way out. All in all, I hella enjoyed seeing/birding that part of the country for the first time and look forward to visiting again for some of the lekking superstars the state is known for. Not a bad way to kill a week in July.

Pawnee National Grasslands Part I

Colorado. That's what I had been blogging about before my computer died. Now that I have a new one, blogging can resume! Of course it's September now, so there is a great deal to catch up on, but BB&B does not quit. Especially now that there are so few of us left, and very few of us remain to carry the blogging torch, we must persevere...

Which is not important for our purposes...not today at least. So back in July, after a great victory with the White-tailed Ptarmigan, we quit the Rockies for flatter ground. I had heard about the expansive prairies of Pawnee National Grassland for my entire birding life, and I finally got to bird it. After assisting a jackrabbit with its suicide (second lagomorph species I killed on this trip, the first without using a rock) with the wheel of our rental car, we were out on the auto tour route of the grasslands. Billy immediately found this Solitary Sandpiper, one of the few shorebirds we saw on the whole trip.

The first prairie dog town we came up on had a number of Burrowing Owls, which were pleasantly common on this day. Here are a couple of juveniles checking us out from the safety of a burrow entrance. I've heard much about how Burrowing Owls love prairie dog towns, so it was pretty cool to finally see this relationship in action.

Slowly we began to see more and more birds along the road. In many parts of the Grasshopper Sparrow's range, it requires much effort to actually see them. That is not true at Pawnee, where they were also pleasantly common. Here is a streaky (by Grasshopper Sparrow standards) juvenile.

Another juvenile, though it looks a bit older than the above bird.

The abundance of Grasshopper Sparrows was definitely due, in part, to the crop of juvenile birds littering the roadsides. Here is an adult bird, with bright yellow lores.

It did not take long for Lark Buntings to start popping up. Lark Bunting is Colorado's state bird, and a very good one at that. Adult females like this one can be very striking, though they lack the crippling effect adult males can often have on an observer.

Juvenile Lark Bunting, a life plumage. Pink legs...I didn't know that color belonged on a Lark Bunting...but even the #7 U.S. birder may be surprised. The birder who is no longer surprised is not an experienced birder, no...it is a dead birder.

Though it was late July and juvenile birds were out in force, we did see plenty of males owning the Economy of Style. A couple were even doing display flights, which I had only seen once before. Prairie birding is so fucking good...

This Common Nighthawk chose a photogenic roosting site. Thank you, nighthawk.

All these other birds were great, but I was frothing at the mouth to see some longspurs. Longspurs, lonspurs, longspurs...as a Californian, we get a taste of them, but all too often it is just a tease. Laplands are always a good bird, albeit expected in certain areas, but Chestnut-collareds are extremely erratic, McCown's is a great bird, and Smith's is a MEGUH. Even if we do get to see 'spurs here, all too often we are forced to settle with absolute bullshit looks. I hadn't seen a McCown's in years, and never outside of California, so this was pretty much my main target bird of the day, even though they are relatively common at Pawnee. Eventually we found an area thick with them, and had a flock on the road next to the car, with a couple females (above) and a bunch of juveniles.

Juvenile longspurs are not a strong suit for most birders. The first time I saw a juvenile Lapland (in the western Aleutians), it caused complete and total brainfreeze. If someone would have asked me what it was right after I got on the bird, I probably would have responded with "Durrrrrrrr". A couple of these juveniles brought that Durrrrrr feeling back, but this is indeed a juvenile McCown's, another life plumage.

Seeing a flock of these charismatic (and probably rapidly declining) birds flopping around in the road in front of me was like plunging a syringe full of heroin into my arm for the first time really cool. The birding gods smiled upon me. But the day was not over yet...more to come in the next post.