The White-winged Crossbill pair continued (Day 102 of their visit) nest-building today at Grandview Cemetery, west terminus of Mountain Avenue, Fort Collins, Larimer County, with activity being noted by George Armbrust about 8:15am continuing until about 3:30pm. Most activities were in the extreme southeastern corner (Section 9), but they spent a surprising amount of time a bit west of the corner as far as the intersection of Sections 7, 8, and 9. When we first confirmed the female carrying nest material last Saturday (February 27), my take was the types of material being gathered looked more like nest cup liner than nest cup. That may have been in error - maybe everything they use is fairly fine and unsubstantial, and what we witnessed that day was close to the beginning of nest construction rather than the end. We shall see. The female continues to like the frayed inner bark of dead cottonwood branches very high up in big trees, twigs and/or bark stripped off dead hackberry branches, and, I think, small twigs from the interior crown of spruce. The male continues to like, watch, chase, encourage, serenade, and defend her. She took a bath again today below the nest tree. Five male voyeur bird-watchers observed at close range from the little pedestrian footbridge just north of the pumphouse. In a slightly different twist today vs. the other day, she also pryed on a cone and pieces of cone lying in the water in between drinks and body dunks.
George was nice enough to give me a key piece of information from his GPS: the elevation of the southeast corner is 5,225 feet ASL, which makes the nest about 5,265 feet. Also, today, several individual Pine Siskins were seen gathering nest material, including old cottonwood "fluff" from last spring that was entangled in various cracks and crevices of spruce boughs and internal fine branches/twigs within spruce crowns. About a half dozen Cedar Waxwings were conspicuously "flycatching" from perches in elms today. I never did see what they were after but the timing on this fairly warm springlike day is pretty good for swarming Subterranean Termites. 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
