late Gray Catbird, Fort Collins (Larimer) on 2Nov

[DAVID A LEATHERMAN]

Today, while photographing plants on the grounds of what remains of CSU's Plant Environmental Research Center (PERC) plantings - it is just west of the monstrous, new football stadium building site in the sw corner of the main Fort Collins campus - I had a Gray Catbird.  It's late on the calendar for this unhardiest (is that a word?) of our common mimic thrushes, but maybe not considering the mild weather we've had so far this autumn.  This would be a good bird to keep track of in hopes it sticks around until the Fort Collins Christmas Bird Count about 6 weeks from now.  The location: in the extreme nw part of the PERC grounds is a large, pale building with lots of black planting tubs stacked by its se corner.  Attached to the south side of this building is a dark green cement block shed.  South of these structures is a 150-foot long hedge row oriented north-south.  The bird was at the south end of the hedgerow near the cluster of buckeye/horsechestnut trees.  Just west of this part of PERC is a large, multistoried new dorm.

As further demonstration of how creatures are hanging on to summer, also today a tattered but active Common Buckeye (butterfly) was soaking up sun here and there on the paths in the northwest corner of Fort Collins' Gardens on Spring Creek, about a mile south of PERC on the west side of Centre Avenue south of Prospect.

Dave Leatherman
Fort Collins