Birds and Nature

I have been out of town a few days so have not gone out to observe the pair of rare Scissor-tailed Flycatchers that have been nesting south of Florence,CO so I was dismayed when I was unable to find the female this morning. I observed the nest tree for over 2 hours and drove by it to look for the female on the nest without success. Though the nest is difficult to see, I do not believe the female could have been sitting on it. I can only suspect that something bad has happened to her. I do not know how long it has been since she sat on the nest as a request for sitings on our state birding listserv produced no sightings since I saw her last five days ago on Monday. I did see the ever-faithful male who has always been nearby the nest tree on the days I have observed. In fact he would usually fly up to near the nest while the female left to forage. Today I saw him sitting in the nest tree quite awhile, still guarding the nest. SeEtta

Thanks to the amazingly mild mid-summer temps (today the highs were in the low 70's down here) after a strange cold front I did some birding in the lower Arkansas Valley where temps are usually 100 or over. Thanks to pro-wildlife habitat changes in the John Martin State Park the habitat has improved substantially--first due to no longer allowing ATV's there as they were tearing up habitat by driving off road (that is why many people buy them so they can drive off road and tear up the ground) and then by closing a lot of duplicative and other user-created 2-tracks that have been used by street legal vehicles but that have fragmented the habitat. Kudos to the local Colo Parks & Wildlife for requesting these changes and to the State Parks & Wildlife Commission for approving them (I went to a Wildlife Commission, some years ago to support the restriction on ATV's). I was delighted to find 2 flocks of Scaled Quail, a species that is likely doing much better with ...

Yesterday I was walking in Florence River Park at the edge of that small south central Colorado town when I spotted this juvenile Broad-tailed Hawk fly by. Broad-tailed Hawks are most often seen in Colorado during migration with most sightings in the spring. This young hawk quickly flew out of view so I did not get very good photos. The top photo shows the profile but not features. So I used photo editing software to lighten up a second similar photo as shown below that now provides a view of field marks for this heavily marked light morph juv Broad-tailed Hawk: dark and very pointed wing tips;; black trailing edge to wings;heavily marked underparts; pale secondaries. SeEtta

Yesterday (Saturday) I got the top 3 pics of the female Scissor-tailed Flycatcher that is nesting south of Florence, CO when flew near to where I was parked (the driveway several hundred feet north of the nest tree). I watched her catch a couple of insects and could see that at least one was a grasshopper. The pic below is very interesting both because I caught her in mid-flight so the salmon-pink underwing patches show nicely but also because there is a grasshopper in the air just above her. In a photo below that I took today the female had lost the grasshopper apparently because it's leg came off so this might be the reason for the grasshopper in this pic too. The next 4 pics that I took today, again when the female foraged near to where I was parked, show a very interesting sequence. In the pic above the female has a good sized grasshopper in her bill that she has caught. In the pic now above the grasshopper has come out of her bill--note the grasshopper leg no...

All the photos I got earlier this week were of the male Scissor-tailed Flycatcher and all the photos I have seen posted on Facebook and ebird have also been of the male. I had a meeting in a town not far from the location these rare birds have been located so dropped by just after 6:30 pm. When I saw her it was obvious this was the female as her tail is much shorter than the males. She did not stay put though and this was the only photo I got of her before she flew off. I couldn't stay but a few minutes to get this pic as I had to go the meeting but I returned afterwards at close to 8 pm. I saw the female perched on the tree on which she and the male have most often been seen, mostly right above the nest that is there. I did not see the male tonight. She flew off for about 5 min then returned briefly then flew off to unknown location at about 8:15 as it got dark. SeEtta

A Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, the first in our county, was found my Rich Miller a little over a week ago south of Florence. I have been jammed with projects and then went out of town so had not gone out to see it. When I read last night that Mike Gaylord had seen two of them I got more motivated to go see if they were nesting as was suggested. I drove by them a couple of times and pulled over a little when safe (narrow 2 lane highway with dirt shoulders) for a few photos but only saw one bird. I then parked in a pull-out over a hundred feet from the tree where the birds have most often been seen and watched--and it was an overcast morning so it didn't heat up quickly so I watched for just over an hour. After about 10 minutes the second Scissor-tailed Flycatcher flew into the tree where the first was still perched. While I watched the flycatchers appeared to take turns watching the tree or maybe the nest in it that is shown in the pic just above. While this nest seem...

I found a few singing male Dickcissels in the Ft Lyon, CO area on a quick trip to the are on July 3 in an field of unknown plants that they had begun to harvest so I expected that the Dickcissels would be displaced and leave. On my way down to Lamar this past week I drove down the road where I had seen these and was surprised to hear Dickcissels singing in the field, this one with the more expected alfalfa, next to the one that they had been in previously which was now completely mowed to the ground. It was close to dark so I didn't stay long but with plans to return while down in the lower Arkansas Valley. I returned with local birder Jill from Lamar and we enjoyed not just hearing them but watching them as they perched on top of the utility wires as well as tall vegetation to sing. The photo below is a female Dickcissel, which I only infrequently see and rarely get to photograph. The sun was so bright that it really washed out the photos of her. The female looks li...