Birds and Nature

After birding with some friends today I went on to do some birding in the Bighorn Sheep Canyon west of Canon City. I spotted 2 Pinyon Jays that I followed by car for a ways then unable to drive where they flew I went on to check on American Dippers. When I drove back that way I refound the jays in some pinyon juniper. I watched from my car as some unknown number of Pinyon Jays flew about and called. I wondered if this could be a nesting area. Though I have found Pinyon Jay creches before I have never found a nesting area. I walked in and found this bird perched rather quietly. It allowed me to approach on foot most unusually close, only about 40 feet away when it moved further inside the tree. Then I spotted the bird in the photo below walking further away, maybe a 100 feet. As I watched it pulled grasses with it's bill, apparently gathering nesting material. Sorry the photo isn't sharper but it was pretty distant for this handheld photo, but you can see the ...

I found this Black Phoebe last week on the property of the Fremont County Sewer District near their sewer plant where I have seen Black Phoebes for several years. As I watched the bird tossed it's head downward and I caught it in the act of casting a pellet, something more often associated with owls. However Black Phoebes and other birds that eat insects or other live prey whole do this to get rid of the digestible parts. Though a real sharp photo below, it does show the pellet and it's size relative to the bird. Casting of pellets by Black Phoebes is noted in Birds of North America (p. 6). I have only seen a Black Phoebe cast a pellet on one previous occasion. I have previously blogged a sequence of photos of a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (and sharper than this one) as it cast a pellet. SeEtta

Interestingly the Harlan's Hawk I posted about just below apparently jumped on the same thermal as the Sandhill Crane family as I watched them all rising higher and higher sometimes in the same view as in this photos. SeEtta

This is a late post as I actually spotted this Harlan's Red-tailed Hawk when I was watching the Sandhill Crane family in Canon City right before they took off to continue their migration This hawk was perched quite a distance away, about 400 feet away, so the perched photos have been severely cropped to see the field marks--black with a little white on breast and around forehead plus undertail. This hawk took off and apparently got on a thermal to rise high in the sky showing off a classic Harlan's underside pattern. SeEtta

I first found these cranes on March 10 (first day birding for several days as I had been out of town) and I watched them take off yesterday and gaining a lot of altitude to apparently provide the winds at higher altitude to continue their migration. As the cranes flew in circles, they beat their wings often then started to glide as they got higher. SeEtta

These short video clips show the family of 4 Sandhill Cranes in the Canon City, CO area that made a stop-over from their migration north to feed. They would come into this fallow agricultural field where manure had been spread the week before. In the video clip the cranes can be seen turning the large pieces of manure and tossing clumps aside to get at insects and/or grain. Clearly shown is one of the cranes keeping a watch while the others eat. (note-the sound sucks because I am parked on the side of a busy road with a lot of traffic plus big wind gusts blowing a metal sign but I did turn the sound lower).  SeEtta

)  I heard these male bluebirds singing yesterday and was privileged to watch their competition for a female Eastern Bluebird. This species is very uncommon in my south central Colorado location but I did document a nesting by Eastern Bluebirds in my area a few years ago. These male bluebirds chased each other and had a song competition that enjoyable to hear (and I suppose the female bluebird thought so also). This series of short video clips start with the boys singing then the chase begins. )     The males just sing from nearby perches in the second video clip. Sorry about the noise-though not that close to a highway the sound really carried when loud vehicles drove by. )    Towards the end of the last video clip there are sounds of people approaching then a chickadee 'audio-bombs' (tried to find this term but didn't locate it as a term so you may have heard it hear first-just the same as photo bomb but for sound) the video with it's song. SeEtta ...