The 125th Christmas bird count season and Longspurs
The Christmas Bird Count led by Audubon is an annual effort to collect bird data for different 15-mile-wide circles across the Americas.
I was fortunate enough to participate in five different Christmas Bird Count circles this year. The ones I participated in were the Denver, Boulder, Bonny Reservoir, Denver(Urban), and Flagler circles. All were within Colorado, a couple were far out on the Eastern Plains.
Out of these counts, there were lots of notable moments. On the Denver CBC, our group saw an American Goshawk fly right in front of our car. On the Boulder CBC, we found a group of Mountain Bluebirds just south of the University of Colorado campus. Although it was rare at the time Mountain Bluebirds are known to disperse into lower elevations, even into the prairie, during winter. Bluebirds again were the highlights for the Bonny CBC when I spotted 23 Eastern Bluebirds, which are rarely seen in numbers that high in Colorado. The Denver(Urban) CBC was highlighted by an uncommon Greater White-fronted Goose.
The best experience I had on Christmas Bird Counts this winter was on the Flagler CBC earlier today. I woke up at 5:00 AM to go two hours east to the town of Flagler in Kit Carson County. Our group started with a bit of birding around the town, in which we picked out one uncommon White-winged Dove among hundreds of non-native Eurasian Collared-Doves. The real highlight of the day was around noon when we started driving some county roads in search of Lapland Longspurs. After a little bit of luck but mostly just Horned Larks we got a call from a birder doing a different portion of the CBC telling us that he had just got 22,500(!) Lapland Longspurs on CR X, we immediately rushed over. As we got closer to the spot Larks and Longspurs started flushing on both sides of the road. We stopped and got out of the car.
We were not just looking for Laplands today though. We kept our eyes and ears peeled for Longspurs and Buntings. Although extremely rare, we were focused on trying to find a Snow Bunting or Smith’s Longspur. Snow Buntings are somewhat regular in Lapland Longspur flocks on the plains, whether as Smith’s has less than 10 records statewide.
To no one’s surprise, we were unsuccessful in getting both species. We might have heard a couple of Thick-billed Longspurs but it was hard to tell since they were only the tew notes, which are hard to separate within the four Longspurs and Snow Buntings. What we did hear and see were Laplands, 3,200 of them!
All in all, it was an exciting Christmas Bird Count season and my favorite to date.
-Archer Silverman
Non-breeding Lapland Longspur on the Flagler CBC(1/4/25)
Mountain Bluebird at CU South on the Boulder Christmas Bird Count(12/25/24).