We have a few bird species in the Bear Creek Watershed that rarely descend out of the high mountains (only possibly during migration or significant weather events), and, to potentially see them we need to go up hill a bit.  In summer these birds include Hermit Thrush, American Pipit, Wilson’s Warbler, Lincoln’s Sparrow, and White-crowned Sparrow.  Other species found throughout the year almost exclusively at higher elevations are White-tailed Ptarmigan, Canada Jay, Clark’s Nutcracker, and Pine Grosbeak.  Finally, there are the three species of Rosy-Finches, all three of which are among the highest breeding birds in North America – Brown-capped on the higher peaks of the Southern Rockies – primarily Colorado, Gray-crowned up in the Brooks Range, Cascades, Sierra Nevada, and the Northern Rockies of Canada, and Black in the Northern Rockies and adjacent ranges from southern Wyoming to central Montana.  In winter they all generally descend to lower elevational and/or lower latitudinal high desert, intermountain parks, valleys, and even out on to the plains.  However, one of the interesting aspects of Rosy-Finch behavior is that they can be elevational daily-commuters and will routinely in good weather return to forage above timberline and in bad weather retreat to lower elevations.  What that means for us locally is that on a nice winter day Rosy-Finches may be all the way up in the highest couloirs of Mount Blue Sky, and then the next day, following a snowstorm, they may be down at Red Rocks.

Here in the vicinity of Evergreen Lake, we rarely see Rosy-Finches though they may be passing by high overhead on a regular basis.  However, in winter, on a semi-snowy day the three species can often be found just a bit west of us up in the spruce-fir forest above 8500 ft.  AND this is exactly where we found them this past Saturday.  In visiting a few homes up towards Mestaa’ehehe Peak, we saw over 300 Brown-capped and Gray-crowned Rosy-Finches, and a couple of Black Rosies.  In addition, we got good looks at Clark’s Nutcrackers and a couple of Red Crossbills.  Seeing Rosy-Finches is never a guarantee with the weather dictating their upslope-downslope movement, so we were lucky to catch some large swirling flocks between rounds of snowfall.  As one of the homeowners said, they’re like “feathered slingshots” dancing in to to briefly blanket the bird feeders before swirling off en masse to an adjacent tree or over the horizon.

Rosy-Finches belong to the genus Leucosticte “white-spotted” perhaps due to an Asian relative the Black-headed Mountain-Finch that has a fair amount of spotting. Our three North American species the Brown-capped, Gray-crowned, and Black all seem to have derived from a common ancestor that originally came over from Asia, where there are four additional congeners (species in the same genus).  Two of our North American Rosies, the Brown-capped and the Black, are now considered endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which is the global authority on the status of the natural world and on the measures needed to safeguard it.  Climate change is reducing the high alpine habitat preferred by these birds and both our endangered species have limited ranges to begin with; the Brown-capped is almost endemic to the state of Colorado with its range extending from the Medicine Bow mountains of southern Wyoming to the Sangre de Cristos of northern New Mexico.

Here along the Front Range the Black Rosy-Finch is generally the least common of the three species and we only got brief looks at a couple.  However, we got excellent looks at scores of Brown-capped and two subspecies of the Gray-crowned.  Most of our Gray-crowned have the gray just above the eye, but perhaps twenty percent of them can be the Hepburn’s subspecies (from the Pacific Northwest) where the whole side of the head is gray.

One final word on our Saturday birds.  We saw no Pine Grosbeaks or Cassin’s Finches and found only two Red Crossbills.  This isn’t a huge surprise, as they can all become uncommon in the lower mountains in years of poor cone crops, such as we are currently having.

And finally, breeding season is ramping up.  Down in the flatlands Great Horned Owls are on nest, Red-tailed Hawks are nest-building, and the ducks are getting fairly frisky.  It’s time to start getting out a bit more frequently.

Mestaa’ehehe Pass vicinity
Feb 15, 2025
17 species (+1 other taxa)
13 participants

Hairy Woodpecker (Rocky Mts.)  5
Canada Jay  1
Steller’s Jay  10
Clark’s Nutcracker  5
American Crow  3
Common Raven  3
Black-capped Chickadee  1
Mountain Chickadee  57
White-breasted Nuthatch  2
Pygmy Nuthatch  7
Red-breasted Nuthatch  5
Red Crossbill  2
Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch (Hepburn’s)  52
Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch (Gray-crowned)  128
Black Rosy-Finch  2
Brown-capped Rosy-Finch  133
Pine Siskin  59
Dark-eyed Junco (Gray-headed)  9