This past Saturday Evergreen Audubon and Mountain Area Land Trust (MALT) conducted a joint bird walk at Sacramento Creek Ranch, a wonderful 71-acre property having a ranch house, greenhouse, barn, and nature trails in the midst of a mosaic of grassland, forest, and wetland habitat near Fairplay.  In August of 2019 MALT acquired the ranch, which was previously known as the Beaver Ponds Environmental Education Center.  The intent is for the ranch to support MALT’s land and water conservation efforts, to preserve biological diversity, to provide access to public trails, to continue outdoor education programs, and to support over forty-five years of continuous high alpine research at the nearby Pennsylvania Mountain Natural Area (also owned by MALT).

A major feature at the ranch is the number of active beaver ponds, and trails on both sides of the creek provide ready access to these.  The diversity of our bird list for the day reflects the fact that we were always standing in at least two habitats at any one time, usually more than that.

Sacramento Creek Ranch, 
Jul 15, 2023
27 species
16 participants

Broad-tailed Hummingbird  6
Spotted Sandpiper  1
Red-naped Sapsucker  4
Northern Flicker (Red-shafted)  9
Western Wood-Pewee  1
Cordilleran Flycatcher  3
Warbling Vireo (Western)  8
Steller’s Jay  4
Common Raven  4
Mountain Chickadee  2
Tree Swallow  7
Ruby-crowned Kinglet  2
White-breasted Nuthatch  2
Townsend’s Solitaire  1
American Robin  17
Evening Grosbeak  2
House Finch  1
Red Crossbill  2
Pine Siskin  1
Chipping Sparrow  4
Dark-eyed Junco (Gray-headed)  7
White-crowned Sparrow (oriantha)  7
Lincoln’s Sparrow  10
Green-tailed Towhee  1
Brewer’s Blackbird  1
Wilson’s Warbler  2
Black-headed Grosbeak  1