Extreme southeast corner, Grandview Cemetery, west end of Mountain Avenue, Fort Collins, Larimer County, Colorado:
This morning was interesting on several accounts. First, shortly after 7:30 I was priviledged to be taken up to the White-winged Crossbill nest by Tim Abbott and Dave Sexton of the City of Fort Collins Forestry Department in their 50-foot bucket truck. I very much appreciate their interest and enlightened approach to urban forestry. What we saw was amazing: essentially nothing. The limited, pitiful view of the nest side we have from the ground thru a spotting scope is actually better than what you can see 5 feet above the nest! As has been stated before, the nest site selection by this female is pure genius. Now, I feel that way even more. Overtopping the nest is a waffle-pattern of live twigs and small branches with full compliment of needles. In effect, they provide a fairly low "roof" over the nest cup. When we got up to the nest site at about 7:45 this morning, the female was on the nest and barely visible. She remained that way our entire stay of 15 minutes or so. Her dark olive back and black-and-white wing pattern were visible in bits and pieces thru the criss-cross maze of foliage. The male actually came in to feed as if we weren't there - something I had hoped would be the case, and which is consistent with their no-fear attitude about humans. His bright, contrasting coloration made him more evident than the female when at the nest as seen thru the "roof", but he was still mostly concealed from direct view. At one point we could see two young mouths, red (inside of the mouth cavity), yellow (mouth lining or "lips") and white (gape), reaching up for food. While up there during this brief visit, we tried maximizing what we could learn (the nest is exactly 40.0 feet off the ground; the crossbills are, indeed, grazing on European Elm Scales (a type of insect) on the branches of the American Elm just west of the nest tree; the young are apparently not making any noise yet). But because of the obscuring factors of foliage and adult birds, we still don't know the number of nestilings, still don't have killer pics of adults feeding young, and so forth. Can't have it all. Second, the situation was graced by the appearance of Alex and June Cringan. Alex has been seriously ill, and said seeing again his old friends from Ontario, "Made his month." As you all know, Alex was one of the formative leaders of Breeding Bird Atlas 1 and he has long monitored the Turkey Vulture roost on Mountain Avenue east of the cemetery. Fittingly, today was the first day I have seen Turkey Vultures this year over the cemetery (as spotted first by one of a foursome of ladies from Denver: Kris Koff, Kate Frost, Tina Jones, and Lois Levinson). Third, while a group of us (Bill Meikle, Parker Gay (from Utah), Rachel Hopper, Scott Rashid, Laurie Waalkes, Joan Glabach, Susan Ward, and Judy Wright) were on the ground observing the nest from the angle initially discovered by Joe Mammoser, we clearly saw the male directly feed the young. This was a first for this nest. As soon as he finished feeding, the female, who patiently waited in the elm like a plane seeking clearance from the tower, came in and did a second feeding. I suspect this will the norm from here on out during warm weather: tag-team efforts at seed gathering and feeding by the two parents. Dave Leatherman Fort Collins -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cobirds?hl=en?hl=en To unsubscribe, reply using "remove me" as the subject.
