I checked a few more locations in Canon City where I have either seen sapsuckers previously or looked like good spots for them. I did find a female Williamson's Sapsucker in a small grove of pine trees at McKinley Elementary School and a quick check of the pines from my car (because I saw no reason to disturb the actively feeding bird) showed a lot of fresh sap wells. When I got home I found an email from Doug Kibbe who had stopped by Canon City on Saturday and found a female Williamson's in Rouse Park. Since this is .5 miles from the McKinley School location this might the same bird so I will try to confirm the presence of a female Williamson's in each location this week. So the count now is 22 and possibly 23 Williamson's Sapsuckers in Canon City.
However, I still suspect there are more sapsuckers in mostly inaccessible locations like backyards of private property where I don't have permission to access. Unfortunately Canon City has few public alleyways. There are still a couple of locations belonging to people I know but haven't been able to contact for permission to go into their backyards. Of course I am running into the laws of diminishing returns--2 hours of looking today got me 1 additional sapsucker compared to observing 20 sapsuckers in 3 hours on Friday. I am wondering if drought conditions in Colorado have any impact on these wintering Williamson's (almost all of the eastern half of Colorado is in 'moderate drought' conditions per NOAA). Though the moderate drought designation was not placed on eastern Fremont County until the week of Oct 19, this area has been shown as 'abnormally dry' by NOAA since about the week of Sept 21. And the western half of Fremont County plus areas north and south in adjacent counties--where the sapsuckers in Canon City may have spent breeding season--are rated as abnormally dry now and have been so rated since early October, Parts of western New Mexico which has been identified as wintering territory for Williamson's Sapsuckers has also been rated as abnormally dry over an increasing area since September--but, unless these sapsuckers can twitter each other, they wouldn't be aware of that. If the sapsuckers stopped over in Canon City on their migration they would find trees that have been watered in parks and yards so the trees here should be in better condition than those in natural areas. Just some musings providing me with more questions about the reasons for this exceptional influx of sapsuckers here this year. I drove out to Brush Hollow Reservoir. The Pacific Loon was still there and it had the lake to itself (and one female Common Merganser, a Western Grebe and some Canada Geese) as the winds were quite strong so boaters and fishermen were not there. SeEtta Moss Canon City http://BirdsAndNature.blogspot.com -- 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]. 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.
