Yesterday Jeff, Dally and I took advantage of the maybe spring weather and went to the Ralston Reservoir to watch birds. My mother had treated us to a bird watching class in April, so we celebrated May Day with our newfound birding prowess.
The Reservoir was a great choice. We ran down the bank brushy with willows and cottonwoods to emerge onto a plate of grassland. The grass is so tall it almost feels like swimming through the leaves, and indeed Dally had to bound through it like a land dolphin. The Reservoir is shaped like a great shrimp, with a skinny tail pointing west, flowing into a great round head also pointing west. At the eastern end of the hairpin back is a cattail swamp, fueled with water from the famous Garland Canal.
Jeff made the first find beyond the usual robins and starlings: a yellow-headed blackbird.
In total, we saw:
- yellow-headed blackbird
- yellow-rumped warbler (Jeff's favorite)
- American coot
- ruddy duck
- canvasback
- northern shoveler
- sandhill crane
- American white pelican
- whooping crane? (rare)
There were also the uaual myriad of mallards, Canadian geese, robins, and grackles. The white crane perplexes me the most; whooping cranes are very rare birds but this was also one of the classic mirgating areas before their populations suffered from human development. The visual I made matched up the information found in the Sibley Field Guide to Birds, but with their numbers estimated at 145 individual birds, maybe I saw something else? Perhaps an albino sandhill? No egrets should be here in Wyoming, so I am rather confused.
We also saw several marmots cruising about the canal like water bears. It was strange to see the water flowing rich and green where Jeff and I walked on thick blue ice in January.
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