By South Main resident Dave Balogh

Bird photos from top: Barrow's Goldeneyes, Gray Catbird, Osprey

Two winters ago, an unusally cold and snowy one, our home in South Main was under construction. Carolyn and I came from Evergreen most every weekend in hopes of seeing progress or at least to enjoy hiking along the Arkansas. South Main is an uncommon development and we soon found there was something else uncommon here, at least to a couple of birding enthusiasts from the Front Range.

Walking along the icy river that winter we spotted several pairs of ducks, the males in black and white plummage. “Goldeneyes”, I uttered. As Carolyn raised her binoculars to take a look, I could see these were the less common Barrow's Goldeneyes. Through that winter and the next we almost always saw at least a pair and as many as 20 of these diving ducks apparently feeding in the river waters. Now I have learned these year-round residents nest in a few lakes above 8000 feet in the high country of western Colorado. In the winter, as we discovered, they will move down to lower elevations for open waters.

Other birds that we have not seen often in other areas but have surprised us in someways by their presence in Buena Vista, where we now live, include the Gray Catbird, Rock Wren, Osprey, Lewis's Woodpecker and Clark's Nutcracker. The catbird is normally a shy, secretive creature but not so this spring at the South Main River Park where the male perched openly on dead snags above and sang incessantly even with kayak rodeo crowd cheering the contestants below. Another songster has been the Rock Wren who fin

ds the peaks of our metal roofs the ideal substitute for a rock ledge to make his territorial pronouncements. So we have two birds on the display only a short distance apart even though the one prefers thick, brushy stream-side habitat and other rocks and boulders on arid slopes.

The Osprey normally fishes lakes and lanquid rivers, not roaring whitewaters, snatching their prey from the water and lifting it up to a bare tree barnch for a safe place to dine. Yet, there was an Osprey one morning in mid-May perched on a tree branch above the river trail and easily sighted from our dining room. It had nothing in its grasp, however, other than the branch that seemed hardly sturdy enough to hold the large bird. It may have roosted overnight before taking wing in search of a better fishing hole.

The Lewis's Woodpecker nests in the old cottonwoods of Buena Vista proper. The Clark's Nutcracker is usually seen farther upstream at higher elevations, although Carolyn recently spotted

one near the BV River Park. The naming of these birds harks back to the Lewis & Clark historical trek. Near Three Forks in Montana, Meriwether Lewis described his sighting of a “black woodpecker” that “flys a good deal like a jay bird.” Farther along in Idaho country William Clark made a less accurate entry of a black, white and brown “woodpecker” that was later identified as a nutcracker species. To find both of these “Lewis & Clark” birds in the same proximity is, I believe, quite uncommon.

Dave Balogh and Carolyn Fraker recently made South Main their year-round home. We are happy to call them neighbors!

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