Hi, All! The Central Plains Experimental Range nest monitoring field season got off to a slow start this week. There are tons of birds around, but we weren't able to work outside most days due to rain. On the days that we did get out (Monday and Thursday), we covered a lot of ground but found few nests. This is not for lack of breeding birds. There are plenty of McCown's Longspurs around that have evidently staked out territories, but we did not find many of their nests. Either they have not built them yet, or the females are spending more time off the nest than usual due to the cold. The Horned Larks breed early and appear to be between nesting efforts. We saw many recent fledglings and found few active nests. The Lark Buntings are still in gregarious mode and have not settled down to establish territories yet. Interestingly, there were some unusual birds about. We had a Rock Wren on the back porch of the field house, far from any rocky terrain. There were large flocks of Chipping Sparrows and Lark Sparrows, with at least one Vesper Sparrow and one Clay-colored Sparrow mixed in. We encountered four Northern Shovelers and one American Coot on a small ephemeral pond in one of the pastures. My favorite bird of the week was a male Blue Grosbeak, which was perched on a barbed wire fence in the midst of a flock of Lark Buntings and other sparrows. Our new nest tally for the week is:
McCown's Longspur: 6 Horned Lark: 3 Lark Bunting: 1 (still building) Brewer's Sparrow: 1 Let me know if you want to volunteer! -Amber Carver University of Colorado Denver (Littleton, CO) -- 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 cobirds+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to cobirds@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/CAAFG0sD-cGPDMjQGuPKwE_Qh_sbB3P70%3DpmnuTEeA5AJCDOLOw%40mail.gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
