Red-breasted Nuthatch
DAVID A LEATHERMAN
Walter et al,
It seems, as the urban ornamental conifer resource matures, RbNuthatch is getting more widespread at low elevation as a breeder (widespread in Ft Collins, local in Greeley, rarely in Lamar, probably other places) and at this time of year they certainly show
up all over the eastern plains. I made an distinctly unsuccessful run yesterday and today for the swallow-tailed kite in my second home of Lamar. As a very minor consolation to not seeing the kite, I had red-breasted nuthatches in three locations down there.
(Other consolations were a roadrunner at Parkview Elementary (same school that once had one of the few CO records of 9-banded armadillo) just north of the Willow Creek Park swimming pool, red-headed woodpeckers and a bunting (never could see it), both at the
north end of the park. [There are at least two families of northern cardinals at the LCC Woods (and chiggers)].
There seems to be a good dispersal of pygmy nuthatches to lower elevation this year, too. Several have been reported in the Denver area and I have had them at Grandview Cemetery in Fort Collins for the last two weeks.
Dave Leatherman
Fort Collins
Cody Porter
For what it's worth, all 3 nuthatch species have moved into Laramie is pretty large numbers this fall. We almost never get White-breasted or Pygmy in town, and I rarely see either away from Ponderosa Pine around here (in my comparatively limited time in CO, I tend to strongly associate both species with Ponderosa). I even had a Pygmy Nuthatch in a high elevation spruce - Doug-fir forest in the Snowy Range, which is quite strange in my experience. Red-breasteds are much more abundant in town than normal this fall.
Curiously, type 2 or Ponderosa Pine Crossbills are also moving through in large flocks, and there is a mass movement of this call type (and types 3 and 4) into the Great Lakes region and the Northeast.
I'm tempted to speculate that this could all be tied to the virtual absence of good conifer cone crops (especially Ponderosa) throughout much of the Rockies. While scouting for possible crossbill field sites this fall, I've traveled around a lot of WY and CO, talked to several of you and folks in SD, ID, MT, and UT and have not been able to find a good cone crop anywhere. The only conifer that has seed this fall across much of the Rockies is Lodgepole, the cones of which none of these taxa feed on a lot in my experience. I also wonder if Doug-fir and Western Hemlock cone crops (the preferred food of types 4 and 3, respectively) are failing across much of the Pacific Northwest, though I've yet to look into that.
Just some thoughts that may or may not be totally bogus.
Good birding,
Cody Porter
(not doing fieldwork in Laramie, WY)