The “Medicine Bow” name here in the mountain west can only be defined as “absurdity” when it comes to early fall birding. Between a California Condor showing up at the top of Medicine Bow Peak in Wyoming in 2018 to a Long-tailed Jaeger flycatching at Medicine Bow Curve in Rocky Mountain National Park in 2020, the name seems to attract the unusual.
After a brutal loss in football to CU Boulder on Saturday night, my friends and I made the walk of shame back to our apartment where I sat down and looked to see what had been seen in Rocky Mountain National Park recently to know what we should target for the walk I was to lead for the CSU Ornithology Club the following day. Hammond’s Flycatchers, Dusky Grouse, American Three-toed Woodpeckers, White-tailed Ptarmigan and more were the hopes after some poking around eBird hotspots. Getting carried away with scrolling through lists, I started wondering what could be strange to see, and nothing really came to mind; maybe just a strange eastern migrant bird or something like that. On Sunday at sunrise once in the park, the birding was nice, but quite lackluster. With the park being overrun with people there to see the early days of the Elk rut, our prospects of seeing a Dusky Grouse were now none, and it would be quite hard to find a quiet place to look for birds. Upper Beaver Meadows and Endovalley gave us great looks at Mountain Bluebirds, Golden-crowned Kinglets, and a couple of other common species, just nothing to really gawk at. A jaunt up Old Fall River Rd took us straight to the alpine tundra, and the excitement surrounding possibly seeing a ptarmigan filled my car. Alex, the old trip leader for the club, has searched fruitlessly more than a dozen times for ptarmigan and still hadn’t seen one. I’ve had good luck with them, especially at Medicine Bow Curve, so I was optimistic, and felt good about the short walk along the trail there. Scanning constantly along the way, many rocks fooled us, and the lack of ptarmigan up the mountain had me turning around looking north down the valley quite a bit.
One of these turn-arounds was interesting, because as I stared off towards the Snowy Range in Wyoming, a bird came into view booking it on an absolute mission going south. Still being relatively new to Colorado birding, I don’t know what’s supposed to be where and when it’s supposed to still be around, but I knew that there was not supposed to be a swift at 11,500 feet… I alerted the rest of the group to its presence, everyone else got on it pretty quickly, and I started firing off shots. Instantly this bird stood out to me as not the expected Chimney Swift. Tiny bodied, short and broad winged, small-billed, extremely pale-rumped and chested; this bird HAD to be a Vaux’s Swift. My hands started shaking and I started trying to reason with myself and the other people who were on the same page as me trying to turn it into a Chimney Swift. There was not a single characteristic of this bird that we just saw that I could turn into a Chimney trait. Never really having seen this species before, I needed to see some comparison photos to seal the deal, this can be a really hard ID to make (if the conditions are poor). These conditions were far from poor, the photos I obtained were rock-solid, and people with more experience than I with the species also could not reason that bird into a Chimney. That meant that I had just found Colorado’s 4th ever record of Vaux’s Swift, and Larimer County’s 1st record.
Once back at the cars (still sans-ptarmigan by the way), we found out that the road was now closed at the alpine visitor center due to a medical emergency, and Trail Ridge Rd was closed until the helicopter could arrive and carry the person off. Stuck at Medicine Bow Curve, a few people continued back out onto the trail to look for ptarmigan again, and I took this foreseeable future at the car to continue trying to reason with myself that it was DEFINITELY a Vaux’s. I’ve jumped the gun on many crazy ID’s before, and even some on complex ID’s such as this. I did NOT want to get back into service and realize I jumped this gun. I remembered back to the spring when the 3rd record of the species showed up in Pueblo and it was a huge deal trying to decide if it was actually Vaux’s or not. A lot of marks came back to memory, and I still could not pinpoint anything to point towards Chimney.
In addition to Sunday’s fun RMNP birding, the last 6 days for me have been nothing short of epic for Fort Collins area birding. I’ve had 130 species, and have found a good number of low-level rarities. Nashville Warbler, Tennessee Warbler, Sabine’s Gull and Blackpoll Warbler are far and away the best. I also FINALLY got my lifer Hammond’s Flycatcher, a huge check off my nemesis list, and also saw a Short-billed Dowitcher and Common Tern, pretty great birds for the front range. It’s been a heck of a week.
eBird Trip Report for this week: https://ebird.org/tripreport/275140
