Extreme southeast corner, Grandview Cemetery, west end of Mountain Avenue, Fort Collins, Larimer County, CO:
Believing Scott Dieni and I had found the male White-winged Crossbill's roost tree yesterday evening, I went back at 6:35am this morning to get a good feel for how he starts his day. Yes, I set up a scope in the semi-dark and strained to see if he was in the spruce where he was when we left him chewing crop-stored seeds at 6:30pm. Didn't see him, then at 6:43 I heard him chatter in the next spruce to the west along the golf fareway. Soon he launched into full song until 6:54. Maybe he has been doing this every morning at first light (impossible for me to know 2.8 miles away in bed with the window closed). He disappeared soon after (6:57) and presumably began his normal routine of fetching seeds from cones and delivering them to the female on the nest. At 9:52 after his third run into the nest, he did something exceptional. He went up into the spruce grove due south of the nest tree (the place where I think they consumated their romance), and then some big cottonwoods just to the southwest of the nest, and sang and sang and sang, jumped up in the air and sang, chased House Finches, sang, jumped up in the air and fluttered and sang - basically was as excited and exuberant in a positive way as he could be for 12 minutes. I strongly suspect she had shown him a hatchling in the nest during that last feeding trip to the nest and he was pretty jacked about it. I must say this event is a credit to these two birds and the rose-colored glasses my friend Mary France (local Fort Collins birder) has been wearing. Very cool is all I can say. Questions at this point: Do the eggs hatch one a day, mirroring the manner in which they were laid? Will we be able to see a difference in the female's behavior on the nest, given the small viewing window we have? Will he feed her and then she feed the babies, or will he directly feed both types of dependants? Can we find an egg shell under the nest tree, and thus answer the unknown of "egg-shell thickness" listed in Craig Benkman's BNA account? Was it more likely Fox Squirrels would predate eggs vs. nestlings, or is now the real danger time for this nest? To be continued. 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 To unsubscribe from this group, send email to cobirds+unsubscribegooglegroups.com or reply to this email with the words "REMOVE ME" as the subject.
