It’s oh-dark-thirty when I pull up to Martha’s house to meet
my carpool group for our first “real” field trip, and it’s easy pick out the
right house: it’s the only one with
lights blazing at this crazy hour on a Saturday morning in early August. But Martha has coffee and freshly baked
scones, and already I know this field trip is going to rock that first small
disaster all to pieces.
Today is all about working on learning habitat, habitat,
habitat. Well, and as John Prine might
say, and to perhaps catch a few birds.
Our first stop is Meyer Ranch Open Space, part of the
Jefferson County Open Space program, in the mountains just southwest of Denver
off Highway 285. We meet in the parking
lot there, sixteen of us in all (9 students and 7 mentors, a pretty sweet
ratio), and before everyone is out of cars, we’re hearing birds. There’s a male Broad-tailed Hummingbird
buzzing around us, and I’m pretty excited that I actually recognize a bird –
and I’ve heard it before most of the others.
Never mind that they were all still in cars and all. And not that there’s any competition
here. Me competitive? Nah.
Chuck is leading this trip, and he tries to corral us to
talk about habitat. Oops, there’s
another hummingbird, and listen! There’s something chipping in that shrub over
there! Oh yeah, back to habitat. Where we’re standing is on the edge of what
is – to someone not trying to classify the place – a large mountain meadow. But it turns out that this stretch of open
land is actually Emergent Wetland and Montane Grassland. Over on the north side of 285, the habitat is
completely different: it’s south facing,
and made up of Cliffs and Ponderosa Woodland (we’ll talk about the differences
between woodlands and forests, I think I may get the gist, but it’s still
likely that I’d miss this on a test today) and Douglas-Fir Forest.
We start walking down the trail, and pretty soon we’re
scattered like seeds in the wind. This
group of folks is looking at the Mullein – a non-native plant that I have
always thought is butt-ugly, but it turns out that birds do like to perch on
the stalks and to eat the seeds, especially at this time of year, so I’m
becoming perhaps a little more accepting of the Mullein. This other group is checking out the
tree: is it a Douglas-Fir or a Blue
Spruce? We’re cautioned over and over
again that just because a conifer is blue, that doesn’t make it a blue
spruce. (Damn!) This bush – er, uh, make that shrub, the
proper botanical term – is a Shrubby Cinquefoil. Cool.
I’ve always liked these yellow flowers, and now I can put a name to
them.
Assuming I can remember any of this.
It’s a mountain of information coming at us, in dribs and
drabs, and faster than those swallows circling overhead. By the way, Chuck asks, does everyone know
what swallows they are? Everyone says
“yes”; well, everyone, that is, except
me. I’m the lone voice saying,
plaintively, NO! So I get an explanation
of the difference between the birds we’re seeing: Barn Swallows and Cliff Swallows. The Cliff Swallows (I am told, but just can’t
see very well) have buffy rumps. Or is
it white rumps?
Oh my. My brain is
full and completely confused, and we’re no more than 20 yards from the parking
lot, and it’s not even 7 a.m.
 |
| Savannah Sparrow Meyer Ranch Open Space |
There’s buzzing of an insect near our feet; I wonder what bug makes that noise. Then we see a Savannah Sparrow perched on a
fence out in the meadow. Er, make that
in the Montane Grassland. It’s a
Savannah Sparrow because………well, I’m learning, we can expect the Savannah
Sparrow to be here – in this habitat at this time of year- and the field marks are right - including the
yellow of the lores (in case you don’t speak bird, that’s the area between a
bird’s bill and its eyes). I get a
really nice look at this bird through someone’s scope, and realize that the
insect I’m hearing is actually this little bird.
Now. That. Is.
Cool. Worth the price of
admission.
 |
| Silene Vulgaris (Bladder Campion) Meyer Ranch Open Space |
And that’s how our day goes.
We spend 2 hours at this location and cover about a quarter of a
mile. We’re stopping to look at trees
and shrubs and a few herbs and forbs (I’m still not exactly sure what those
dang forbs are, but apparently I’m looking at them). We’re easily distracted by birds (the
hummers, the swallows, Red-winged Blackbirds, a few Song Sparrows and some
Yellow-rumped Warblers, some buzzy Pine Siskins, and a bunch of Mountain
Chickadees).
 |
| Wild Blue Flax Meyer Ranch Open Space |
We head further up into the mountains, making similar stops
along the way. At one impromptu stop
along Geneva Creek, we get great samples of multiple plants right along the
side of this dirt road: a Bristlecone
Pine (needles in groups of 5! Resin on
the needles! Cones with little – can you
guess it – bristles on them!), a Limber Pine (again, needles of 5, what up with that? It’s so unfair!; but great big cones with thick scales. And- you guessed it – NO bristles!)
Up and up we go, reaching Geneva Creek Campground, where the
habitat is High Elevation Willow Carr and FUCM.
Let’s talk for a minute about habitat, shall we? I need to “get” this stuff, so if you’re
following along for the pretty pictures, you’re going to have to suffer a
little, too.
That “Carr” thing?
Well, if you look it up in the dictionary (online, of course, since my
old paper dictionaries don’t even have it as a word), it will refer you to
“fen”. And then if you look up “fen”, it
just doesn’t seem quite right. The best
reference I’ve found essentially calls “willow carr” equivalent to a willow
thicket. Now, I’m guessing that isn’t
exac-a-tackly accurate, but it’s what I’m going with for now. It kind of makes sense to me.
And the FUCM? Yeah,
sound it out as you read it; I feel
better every time I do that. It stands
for something like Forest Upper Coniferous Mixed. In other words, it’s a mixed forest with less
than 50 percent aspen trees. Pretty
simple. And this one? I love the code. Makes me smile every time I fill out a Trip
Report. (Oh yeah, you’re going to hear
about Trip Reports. Don’t worry about
that.)
 |
| Golden Banner Guanella Pass |
So, back to our field trip.
At Geneva Creek – once we’ve sorted out what habitat we’re in – we start
to see birds. Okay, I lie. We’re actually seeing birds the moment we get
out of the car (not “carr”, mind you), and it takes a masterful leader (or
masterful birder leader?, sorry, channeling my friend David Kleeman) to keep us
somewhat organized. There are a bunch of
Common Ravens (as opposed to a murder of them – that would be crows - but that begs the question, is murder reserved for Crows, or does it apply to all Corvids? More birdspeak, to be explained - I hope - sometime soon), one
seemingly out-of-place American Robin (seemingly because we’re taught that
AMROs – that would be the four-letter ornithologist abbreviation for this bird –
were originally higher elevation birds, but they were beckoned down to lower
elevation by all the food available when we – homo sapiens – changed stuff up),
a few hummers, and a few other species.
Everyone gets their knickers twisted over a Fox Sparrow: not a common sight here, but we definitely have
one, if only briefly, and bully for us.
Sadly, no photo.
Up and up we go.
We’re in Colorado: easy to
do. We hit the top of Guanella Pass. The habitat here is Krummholz. Now, who can’t get excited about a habitat
name like Krummholz?
The word is actually from the German, meaning “twisted tree”
or something like that. In the birding
habitat world, it means the area between timberline and Alpine Tundra. This is the area where we would expect to see
some really cool birds. Birds like
White-tailed Ptarmigan and Clark’s Nutcracker and Brown-capped Rosy-Finches. As we pass upwards (and we do, on the trail
leading up to Mount Bierstadt, one of Colorado’s 14ers), we pass into Alpine
Tundra. Here, we can expect many of the
same Krummholz birds, but also a few more, including Northern Goshawks.
 |
| Indian Paintbrush Guanella Pass |
Sadly, today we only see – and briefly, at that – a few Clark’s Nutcrackers and a single White-crowned Sparrow.
 |
| Indian Paintbrush Guanella Pass |
But we do have a lovely hike, and a lovely look at the
habitat up here, including the Subalpine Fir (the cones on these guys grow UP,
like candles!) and some different colored Indian Paintbrush – both red and
yellow.
 |
| AMB Class and Mentors, heading down the hike on Guanella Pass The birds? Not so many The views? Made up for the lack of birds |
We head back down from the high elevation, making a final
stop at a place called Bruno Gulch. We
have more FUCM (isn’t that right!) and some Lodgepole pine and aspen
forests. It’s actually quite hot, and
the sun is brutal, and we’re all a little tired and slightly frustrated from
the lack of birds on that lovely hike up at the top of Guanella Pass. But then we happen upon some Dark-eyed Juncos. We apparently get too close to a nest, since
at one moment we’re all looking at these birds through binoculars, and the next
moment, they are scolding and threatening and dive-bombing; amazing to see 15 full-bodied adult humans
retreat from an attack of “The Birds” so quickly. Now, if you’re paying attention, you’ll
remember that we had 16 people at the beginning of the day, so why 15 people on
retreat? Well, that might (just might)
be because yours truly was the only full sized adult human to stick around, and
risk attack by these birds in hopes of seeing some youngsters. Nope, I don’t actually get a look at the
babies, but I do get a shot of one of the adults.
 |
| Dark-eyed Junco Bruno Gulch |
We march out a little further, and see a few Stellar’s Jays,
and a smattering of Chipping Sparrows.
We’re just about done for the day, and heading back to the cars through
a meadow (or is it a meadow? It’s not a
Carr, and not a FUCM, and not a …………but I’ll have to figure that out as we go),
and somebody yells and I see people pointing to a life form in a tree, and
we’re all looking at a bird, and then another, and then another……………. It’s a flock of Mountain Bluebirds coming
through this space. We’re all
enraptured.
It’s why we all came out today.
 |
| Mountain Bluebird, in Shrubby Cinquefoil Bruno Gulch |
No comments:
Post a Comment