I just returned from running my annual Breeding Bird Survey in the
general Flagler area in Kit Carson County. (My report will be a bit
like Bill Maynard's from Chico Basin yesterday.)
First off it is amazingly green out there, much more verdant than I have
ever seen it. Part of that stems from what looks like a bumper winter
wheat crop, ("amber waves of grain" coming up soon) but the meadows,
weedy fields and short grass prairie are all going for it too. That
situation seems to be pleasing to the avian life, but different species
were quite specialized in their habitat preferences. Lark Buntings were
everywhere in the right places, but they seemed to leave the longer
grassed weedy fields to the Grasshopper Sparrows. This is one of those
years to check out alfalfa fields (sorry Joe R.), I'm betting on a big
Dickcissel influx. My BBS route has only two patches of alfalfa-the
good one had three singing Dickcissels along the road and the poor one
had one. Several Cassin's Sparrows were around, usually in the fields
with some major forbs growing up. I also think that numbers of Northern
Mockingbird are way up all over eastern Colorado. I was close to double
digits along my route which means one singing at just about every
farmstead. Finally, absolutely nothing in that winter wheat!
Unfortunately, two of those wheat fields had held Mountain Plover in the
past-but across the road from one of them I spotted a single plover
foraging in wheat stubble from last year's crop.
Finally, in Flagler itself there was a singing, male Rose-breasted
Grosbeak.
Bill Kaempfer
Boulder
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