Don't even ask how many hours I've spent at the cemetery in January, but if you have a calculator there were 17 visits at about 4 hours/visit. As stated earlier, the White-winged Crossbills are NOT normally including Grandview in their daily circuit these days. I last saw them on the 26th. On that day, they may have been in the cemetery feeding, I became aware of them when they were in the air and calling rapidly, got the female in my binocular for 2 seconds, and the presumed pair headed off to the south over the golf course. That makes a grand total of 2 seconds of positive detection in the last 9 visits involving about 36 hours of hunting dating back through January 21. If you haven't seen them yet (7 people tried yesterday, 2 more today) and are thinking of casually ticking them off while sticking your head out the vehicle window, I would respectfully suggest your odds of seeing an albino Phainopepla eating pepperoni pizza on Trail Ridge Road are about as good. But knowing birders are determined, and as stated before, I believe the crossbills are "out there" somewhere in the cemetery neighborhood, perhaps nesting. The literature states they like to pick an isolated nest tree that forces their primary nest predators, squirrels, to cross open ground (which squirrels don't like to do for reason of their own vulnerability to predation). The golf course (named "City Park Nine") has about two dozen scattered spruce big enough/old enough to have cones and that individually appear to have crowns suitably dense for nesting.
During my recent visits I have focused quite a bit on the activities of squirrels and am more convinced than ever squirrels, indeed, may be the reason the crossbills gave up their apparent territory along the south side of the cemetery for a safer neighborhood. Fox Squirrels are EVERYWHERE in Grandview. And they are beginning a brood cycle of their own, complete with courtship chasing, squeals of rejection/lust, and starting two days ago, nursery construction/rennovation. I watched one female squirrel make at least 15 trips to a particular patch of grass about 10 feet from the base of her tree, skillfully and quickly load up her jaws with the squirrel equivalent of a "bushel", pack it in good with her paws, and run up the trunk. She almost always got to the first branch, turned around to see if I was watching, twirled her tail around a couple times in modest irritation, and then proceeded up into the very dark, dense part of this Engelmann Spruce. In about a minute she had added her load of contruction materials to the nest and was back down the tree. Assured I was no threat, she repeated this routine over and over. Yesterday, this same squirrel had switched to a different material gathered from a different nearby spot - wet leaves. Like the day before, several loads of this material were also hauled up to the nest. Bob Villa has nothing on her. Interestingly, the tree, second one in from the extreme west end of Section 2 (just ne of the golf course portapotty) is the same tree where on 5 January I lucked onto the quiet, "secret" foraging by the two crossbills involving cone severing, quick procurement of a few seeds per cone, cone dropping, and severing of the next cone, etc., for over a half an hour. It was one of about 5 trees I figured might be the nest tree. Crossbills are reported to sever and drop "closed" cones (which these were) and leave "open" cones up in the tree tops. In both cases, the presumed strategy is that both types of cones will be revisited, one set on the ground, the other on high. As one can see by looking at the hundreds of cones on the ground under this tree and the one next to it, squirrels have chowdered a few, beating the crossbills to any seeds they might get from the chowdered cones on a return visit. Even though a very low percentage of the dropped cones were subsequently fed upon by squirrels, the evidence of chowdered cones together with all the squirrel nest-building activity in this particular tree, and all the other squirrels (numbering in the DOZENS) actively cruising the edge of the golf course, the roads in the cemetery, and up in the cemetery trees very well could have discouraged the white-wings. Their main nest predator is the Red Squirrel, which is only about one-fifth to one-half the mass of a Fox Squirrel. If the former is trouble, the latter could be worse. Total species seen over the last two days: 24 (including a prairie Merlin frightened out in the open by a 21-gun salute at a military burial, followed by the falcon taking over two hours to consume a European Starling; courtship twirling atop a power pole by Rock Pigeons; courtship cooing by Eurasian Collared-Doves; courtship trumpeting by Northern Flickers; courtship aerial displays by a male Hairy Woodpecker, and continuation of the reworking of the old sapsucker wells in nearby Austrian pines; an agonistic staring contest followed by tail and wing flicking by two male Downy Woodpeckers; a ventriloquist American Robin calling quietly as he does almost everyday in a berry-laden juniper; and many other cool behaviors by the other resident species. This post is long enough, so I'll quit. Dave Leatherman Fort Collins -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds". To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cobirds?hl=en?hl=en Visit the CFO Website at: www.cfo-link.org
