--
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+u...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to cob...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/373b401d-71ba-4a31-aea8-587e961ca519%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
For what it’s worth, both of these species (Hooded Warbler and Painted Bunting) are SE US breeders as opposed to boreal Canada breeders like a Cape May Warbler or Mourning Warbler. In fact many of the rarer migrants this fall, the White-eyed Vireo found by Steve Mlodinov and Nick Moore in Yuma County comes to mind or even the Red-shouldered Hawk at North Sterling State Park which was classified from photos as of the Arkansas-East Texas population by Brian Wheeler, are SE birds. Perhaps the hot and dry weather of the last 6-8 weeks is indicative of a high pressure shield that had deflected northern migrants further east while some birds for the SE have been free to wander around.
So that advances an hypothesis as to why these kinds of birds, but why relatively so many? How does this sound—a bird going south up the Uncompahgre Valley might be daunted by the prospect of the San Juan mountains looming right ahead. Experienced birds that have been that way before know that if the grit their teeth (bills?) and take the flying leap, the other side of the mountains isn’t too far. Those who haven’t been that way before might decide to get some extra fat on the bones. So the question is, is there a (statistically) higher proportion of hatch-year birds at Ridgeway vis-à-vis Barr or Chico?
Bill Kaempfer
Boulder
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/8f6b3f67-fe4f-49d5-8ce2-bd0153133c82%40googlegroups.com.