This morning I took a birder from Massachusetts, Naeem Yusuff, to a few locations to see Williamson's Sapsuckers. I found the first sapsucker, a female, in just a few minutes of looking at Rouse Park. We saw an additional female and 3 male Williamson's in about an hour.
After Naeem left to look for the Harris's Sparrow at Fountain Creek Reg Park, I went looking for sapsuckers in dry gulches outside of Canon City. I found a male Williamson's in another multi-trunked siberian elm type tree and it was just adjacent to a dry gulch that is 2 miles from the Williamson's I have been following in a different dry gulch just outside Canon City and 3-4 miles distant from the closest locations where I have found Williamson's this year. It is the same dry gulch, but almost a mile down-gulch, that I posted several days ago about finding additional siberian-type elms with fresh sap wellls. The surrounding landscape is juniper-grassland with several rural homes within a few hundred yards. There is no way to know if this is a new male or possibly the one that is no longer feeding on the trees at the other dry gulch. Given the many miles of dry gulches surrounding the Canon City area, I have to wonder how many more Williamson's are out there in additional siberian-type elm trees. And what does it mean since it has previously been thought that Williamson's Sapsuckers, with exception of the few previously found wintering in the Canon City area, migrate out of Colorado into New Mexico,SE Arizona and Mexico for the winter? I did find the male Red-naped Sapsucker in Lion's Park in Florence but couldn't find the female Williamson's that I found there a few weeks ago. There were fewer fresh sap wells in the pines. He has just a red wash in the nape area. I have uploaded two pics of this guy onto my BirdsAndNature<http://BirdsAndNature.blogspot.com>blog. 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.
