Today at the Lamar Community College Woods, Lamar (Prowers) it was warm and windy, with clouds moving in. Highlights: Nashville Warbler (female, eastern) eating aphids from Russian-olive leaves at the north end e of the northern observation notebook Northern Cardinal (male) eating Russian-olives at the south end, basically 50 yards ese of the southern observation notebook just w of the creek thicket/cattails (the area where you can see little pools of water underneath the overtopping thicket, for those of you familiar with the area) RED FOX SPARROW (1) seen at 2 and 5pm, photographed, apparently eating Russian-olives, same location as the cardinal (also seen by Jane Stulp) Orange-crowned Warbler (1) eating Russian-olive aphids at the south end just before you get to the first houses in the Woodland Park Subdivision Yellow-rumped Warbler (1) in Russian olives (same location as the cardinal and fox sparrow) Do you see a theme here? All these special November birds were in Russian-olive, either eating aphids and/or olives. Other species seen in the last three days utilizing this tree: Northern Flicker (olives), Dark-eyed Junco (aphids and olives), Ruby-crowned Kinglets (aphids), Golden-crowned Kinglet (aphids), Red-bellied Woodpecker (olives), White-crowned Sparrow (aphids, maybe olives also), White-throated Sparrow (aphids, maybe olives also), and European Starling (olives). I used to always call this tree "60% bad, 40% good" in my presentations to landowners. I am about to flip the %s, or at least call it 50-50. The ecological rap against Russian-olive has always been the fact it's an exotic invasive, and that, because it has few insects, it does not harbor the same bird diversity in riparian areas as poplars and willows. Not sure I can anecdotally agree with the diversity part, and the few insects it does have (various aphids, for the most part) are highly attractive at key times of the year (like now). And then there is the olive pulp, which to my taster is like weak marshmallow. I presume most birds that eat olives are after the pulp, except for species like Wood Duck, that apparently also gain by grinding the pits in their crop. I am NOT championing Russian-olive and hope this isn't a contentious subject on COBIRDS, just suggesting that environmentalists (however defined) and agency ecologists try to see this this as a gray, not black-white issue. Jason Beason of RMBO and I discussed this lately and he is right-on for suggesting olive eradication projects contain an element of bird species monitoring before and after the attempted removal efforts. Over time, maybe we would have some idea of what to expect, pro and con, short-term and long-term, from such activities. Total for "Lamar" 6-9November 2010: 73 species Dave Leatherman Fort Collins
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