Inquiring minds... Yesterday I saw the one that's been hanging around south mesa trail in Boulder. A lifer for me. Fascinating that it flycatches. It certainly does not look agile enough for that. I got really good looks for 20 minutes. Later I reviewed the field markings and don't understand why this individual did not have the grey neck. I did not find any reference that characterized distinctions of a juvenile. Thoughts?
I also wondered why sightings for this species are so rare. So I looked at the ebird science page for the abundances and migration animation. It seems there is not really a *substantial* change along the front range during migration and it seems this is a year-round home for some. Then I looked for the population reports and was startled to see the decline and the total number of like 70k. That's depressing. The hypothesis for the decline did not make intuitive sense to me; forest management techniques with regard to dead trees for nesting. Final question is if this Boulder individual is using that cottonwood for food caching now. The guides say they do that in the fall. While I was watching (early morning) it basically was just clinging to one spot on the tree without doing much other than looking around occasionally. I wonder if it was literally covering a crack with it's cache. And how does it keep competitors from the cache? That tree is a hangout for many other possible opportunist. While I was there a Hairy, Flickers and a Stellars came. Ron Bolton Larimer county -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/59bc7628-4f79-4d02-8974-da2805448389n%40googlegroups.com.
