No clouds hung in the blue, blue sky as dog and I hiked up in the mountain shade this morning. Calm, a little nippy, a little birdy. And before very long at all, I had four kinds of finches on my list.

And by the end of our hike, when the final species popped into view, I had three corvids. Those two groups accounted for half today’s total.

And that final species? A little group of four Steller’s Jays.

Grandeur Peak Area List
At 8:03 a.m. (9:03 MDT), I hiked a few hundred feet up a mountain.

1. Black-billed Magpie*
2. House Finch**
3. Northern Flicker
4. Spotted Towhee (v)
5. Rock Pigeon*
6. Dark-eyed Junco
7. Ruby-crowned Kinglet
8. Woodhouse’s Scrub-jay
9. Lesser Goldfinch
10. American Robin
11. Pine Siskin (v)
12. American Goldfinch
13. Black-capped Chickadee
14. Steller’s Jay

Mammals

Red Squirrel

(v) Voice only
*Also elsewhere
**Voice only elsewhere