Ted Floyd reported bushtits nest building at Greenlee Preserve near Boulder
yesterday. I can add a report from Fort Collins. Also yesterday, I was quite
surprised to see bushtits building a nest from the front door of my apartment.
I live about a mile east of CSU in an older residential area. The nest tree is
actually on the property to the south, which hangs over the boundary fence to
our complex. The nest is about 20 feet up on the east side (gets the morning
sun) of a very large Colorado Blue Spruce. BNA says nest construction can take
anywhere from 2-7 weeks to complete and that spider webs are integral to their
construction. This nest is well enough along to have the general ball shape of
a finished nest but is still very well concealed within the spruce needles.
What the BNA account doesn't reflect very well is the current permanent range
of this bird. The range map is what I would call the 1980 range map when
bushtits were mostly on the far West Slope and regularly along the Front Range
only south of Colorado Springs. Definitely a change. The extent and timing of
their expansion seems to parallel quite closely that of black-chinned
hummingbird. Both birds now extend northward into southern WY. Will be
interesting to see what BBA II shows.
As an additional note, we need to figure out the new foods that have allowed
this expansion to be successful. I have personally seen them getting Kermes
scale insects from oaks at Denver Botanic Gardens, various aphids at the PERC
Gardens at CSU, hackberry gall-making psyllids at Grandview Cemetery in Fort
Collins, and my friend Doug Swartz here in Fort Collins showed me hawthorns
full of mealybugs that he has observed often host bushtits. At LCC in Lamar
they are often in tamarisk (getting aphids and attendant lacewings?). In my
apartment complex they are often in junipers which I know have aphids. I
suspect they are also getting boxelder psyllids.
Dave Leatherman
Fort Collins
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