Barr Lake State Park | This wildlife preserve is southeast of Brighton, a town established by gold-rush settlers who found more potential in supplying crops and livestock for prospectors and the new city of Denver 20 miles to the southwest. Today, about 28,000 people live in the city, which is the Adams County seat.
Once just a big buffalo wallow, Barr Lake has been a water-filled oasis on the plains since farmers built a dam at its north end nearly a century ago.
Now the centerpiece of a state park, the reservoir – just east of Interstate 76 at roughly 136th Avenue – is known for its fishing (it’s stocked with eight species from bass to walleye), its hiking (it’s encircled by a flat 12-mile trail) and even more for its bird-watching (some 330 species have been seen).
“If you look around you can see there aren’t very many trees or water sources in the surrounding terrain,” says Mary Charbonneau, an educator with the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory. “Birds stop here during their fall and spring migrations because they’re looking for the same things they need during the regular year – food, water, shelter and a place to rest.”
At a banding station at the edge of a cottonwood grove a short walk north of the visitors center, wildlife biologists netted about 60 species of songbirds this fall – including some that feed so voraciously on the abundant plant and insect life that they may gain 20 percent in body weight in just a couple of days.
But the park’s biggest avian attractions are bald eagles that typically nest atop tall trees within sight of a boardwalk and viewing gazebo on the lake’s south end, starting in February.
“The eagles did really well this year. They fledged three eaglets,” says Starr Nicely, an RMBO staffer. “But with development encroaching and so many lights and so much noise, I think it might be bad for them. With the state park here, there’s a buffer zone. But they’re really sensitive, and they need a huge territory.”
– Jack Cox
