Fort Collins, Larimer County from 8a-7p today (5/7/2010): Grandview Cemetery (8-10:30am): The White-winged Crossbills keep going. This is Day 167 of their visit. The female is building a second nest and the male is teaching junior the ropes. Despite these disparate activities, they manage to remain a threesome a lot of the time. Yesterday the female was busily tearing apart an old nest (probably Pine Siskin or House Finch), while the other two watched from a few feet away. I saw the juvenile eating American Elm seeds yesterday, being fed spruce seed mash by the male, and pecking at Colorado Blue Spruce cones. The juvenile has a mostly-yellow bill that is starting to twist to the right (both parents are left-billed, but as Dr. Ron Ryder's studies long ago told us, this is not a heritable trait). Other ID characteristics of the young bird: much more heavily striped than the female, shorter billed, shorter tailed, wing-bars modest, and it's only vocalization, probably a begging call, is a sand-papery "schee-schee-schee.......schee-schee-schee......", etc. The parents stashed the juvenile somewhere this morning and copulated briefly, twice. During the last nesting cycle, these frequent, brief copulations preceded her sitting on the nest presumably to start laying eggs by about a week.
Today was the first day I saw one of the two Great Horned Owl babies out of the nest. It was sitting in a spruce tree 50 feet to the west of the nest elm with the mother. The runt nestling sunned itself alone in the elm crotch. Lots of migrants today: Orange-crowned Warbler (2 in hackberry), Broad-tailed Hummingbird male heard zooming through (at least two pairs somewhat surprisingly nested in the cemetery last summer), Warbling Vireo (1 in hackberry), Lark Sparrow, Yellow Warbler, and two latish White-crowned Sparrows. Total of 33 species Highlights from along the Poudre River, both north (Riverbend Ponds and Cattail Chorus Natural Areas) and south (Prospect Ponds Natural Area and Northern Colorado Environmental Learning Center) of Prospect (11:30am-7pm): Clay-colored Sparrow (several, FOS for me up here) White Pelican (several soaring around overhead, seemingly all late morning and afternoon) Bullock's Oriole (1m, FOS up here) Orange-crowned Warbler (at least 10, big influx, one eating aphids from curled leaves of a riparian Red-twig Dogwood) Swainson's Thrush (4, FOS) Virginia's Warbler (1m, FOS, just north of the River Bend Office Complex north of Prospect) Blue-gray Gnatcatcher (1, FOS up here) Hermit Thrush (2, FOS up here) MacGillivray's Warbler (2m, FOS up here) Gray Flycatcher (1) Broad-winged Hawk (perhaps as many as 4 along the river north of Prospect, tough to tell exactly how many) Northern Parula (1m, singing briefly, FOS up here, constantly moving north thru the Riverbend Ponds NA) Wilson's Warbler (2m) Swallows (hundreds, in order of most numerous to least: Cliff, Tree, Rough-winged, Barn, and Bank - no Violet-green) Savannah Sparrow (1 FOS) Sage Thrasher (1, FOS, west side of Cattail Chorus in a little area of native rabbitbrush) Common Poorwill (1 FOS flushed from north of Prospect in Cattail Chorus NA) Green Heron (1 FOS in Cattail Chorus NA) Dusky Flycatcher (at least 2, FOS) Least Flycatcher (at dusky 2, FOS) Empidonax spp. (3 or 4) Green-tailed Towhee (1, FOS) Peregrine Falcon (1 over ELC) Rock Wren (1 on the rocks at the north side of the Water Treatment Plant w of ELC) Brewer's Sparrow (1, FOS up here) Bald Eagle (1a over ELC) Total of 76 species Notable misses: Belted Kingfisher, Black-crowned Night-Heron, and American Kestrel 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
