Bird news

Tree swallows moved into the new bluebird nest boxes this year at the High Plains Arboretum. Photo by Mark Gorges.

Bird banter includes news from the backyard and back of beyond

Published Aug. 4, 2023, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.  

By Barb Gorges

            Last month I reported how quickly my robins moved into their favorite nest spot after the house sparrows’ unfortunate nest was removed nearby.

            Well, the robins abandoned their nest after too much activity under and over it when our lawn sprinkler system was being repaired. As soon as they left, the house sparrows took over their nest. They are constantly bringing in more grass to fix it and I think I heard young birds cheeping.

            On July 26, I saw our first broad-tailed hummingbird this year in our red beebalm. She didn’t like the way it was fenced in, so I think we’ll take the fence down temporarily and keep the puppy corralled elsewhere.

            Also July 26, but earlier, I heard a broad-tailed hummingbird at 10,000 feet in the Snowy Range, so not all the hummers up there were finished with nesting.

            In Riverton the week before, I stayed at the dorms at Central Wyoming College. Sleeping next to an open window, one morning I could hear the call of a goldfinch over and over – at 5 a.m. Was it a call of warning or distress?

            Mark and I also did a little birding with friends up there who live next to Ocean Lake. Marta introduced us to her kingbirds, phoebes, and tree swallows, but the owls were not at home.

            Many bird topics come up at Cheyenne Audubon board meetings. At our July meeting, our vice president was incredulous that the U.S. Forest Service has been doing prescribed burns in June and July to reduce underbrush in the Pole Mountain area west of Cheyenne. They’ve scorched hundreds of trees where birds may have been nesting at that time of year.

            The chapter has funded a transmitter for one of the birds in a white-faced ibis migration study. Among the birds captured in Wyoming was a glossy ibis – quite far from home.

            We’ve also been assisting Rustin Rawlings in collecting data for NestWatch on the eight bluebird boxes he put up at the High Plains Arboretum this spring. House wrens and tree swallows are enjoying them. Maybe the mountain bluebirds will show up next year when the boxes are more weathered.

            National Audubon is holding a conference in November for training and inspiring community environmental activists. It will be in Estes Park, Colorado. Getting there could be tricky that time of year but would be an incredible experience if you want to go.

            Three board members met Cidney Handy, the new Audubon Rockies staff member based in Cheyenne. She is a range ecologist for Audubon’s Conservation Ranching Initiative. She’s looking for Wyoming ranchers that would like to enroll for free who are interested in learning bird-friendly ranching practices that can bring them a premium price in the retail market.

            Cheyenne Audubon board members briefly discussed the Bureau of Land Management’s calls for public comments on conservation leasing and updating sage grouse policies.

            The Bird Conservancy of the Rockies, headquartered in nearby Brighton, Colorado, has a lot of activities for all ages coming up. Check their website at https://www.birdconservancy.org/.

            I subscribe to BirdLife International’s email newsletters, https://www.birdlife.org/. It is a partnership of 120 national organizations in more than 115 countries. Bad news about disappearing bird species is balanced by stories of victories. Recently, the European Union’s Parliament voted to pass the EU Nature Restoration Law. There were 140 amendments, but the final text was accepted by a margin of 36 votes out of a total of 648.

            I’m not on Twitter, but I always thought it was cute – the chubby bluebird logo and calling posts “tweets.” But the new owner is changing the platform’s name to “X.” It feels like he’s targeting sweet little birds. Instead of tweeting, will people be “X-ing” things? Sounds like crossing them out.

            On the other hand, ChangeX, Microsoft’s community grants program, has been providing Cheyenne Audubon with thousands of dollars for the Native Prairie Island Program for which we partner with the Laramie County Conservation District. Homeowners can call LCCD to request native plant seeds and borrow the seeder to spread them on new septic fields and other areas that need restoration.

            And that brings us back to our own backyards. What are you doing for the birds? Keeping your cats indoors or in a screened outdoor catio? Using motion-activated yard lights to keep nights darker? Using bird-friendly yard and garden practices (look up Habitat Hero online)?

            Are you throwing out hummingbird nectar when it gets cloudy? Good. Make sure you provide nectar that is 1 part regular white granulated sugar to 4 parts water. No dye. No other kinds of sugar. And think about planting more red tubular flowers like red beebalm, Monarda didyma.

House sparrow effect

House sparrows build nests in natural and man-made cavities, like this box provided by a cable company. Photo by Mark Gorges.

House sparrow effect demonstrated in backyard

Published July 7, 2023, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.

By Barb Gorges

            I blame the puppy.

            When she joined our family last September, I thought it would be a good idea to feed the birds hulled sunflower seeds so that there wouldn’t be hulls under the feeder for her to chew.

            I noticed over the winter that we had more house sparrows visiting us than usual. Normally, few ever bothered to crack open our usual black oil sunflower seeds. They might look around under the feeder for scraps, but they don’t usually sit on the feeder pulling out seeds.

            Turns out they really like sunflower seeds – if they don’t have to deal with the hulls. And with more hanging around, more of them thought about nesting here, but not for the first time.

            Last year, after the robins fledged one batch of young and laid one or two eggs for the next, the house sparrows started building their nest on top. They completely covered the robin eggs with a hollow ball of dry grass stems. The robins left. We took the whole mess down. House sparrows are one of three non-native bird species in the U.S. that are legal to disturb or kill without a permit, the others being starlings and pigeons, probably for agricultural reasons originally.

            This year, we were happy to see the robins return to the ledge over our back door. It looked like the eggs hatched mid-May, about the time we left on a trip. The puppy left, too, so I didn’t worry about her picking up any fledglings falling out of the nest.

           When we came home, the nest was empty. Mark took it down so the house sparrows wouldn’t take it over – the world does not need more house sparrows. Originally native to Europe and Asia, they have done a wonderful job of colonizing the globe, except for Antarctica.

            I was surprised that the robins didn’t want to nest on our ledge a second time. They seemed to have abandoned our yard. On the other hand, every time I stood at the kitchen sink and looked out the window, there would be a male house sparrow on the wire, sometimes with dry grass in his beak. He would fly off somewhere to the left, out of sight.

            Late June, Mark and I were standing not far from the robins’ favorite inner corner of our house exterior. We were discussing exactly where to set up a kennel to keep the puppy (and garden) safe when we aren’t outside with her.

            Barely 6 feet from the robins’ favorite ledge are various electrical boxes hanging on the wall. I noticed one had a long piece of dead grass sticking out from the bottom. We opened it and found it half full of dry grass and a dozen feathers, and four tiny eggs. House sparrow eggs.

            Dry grass and electrical connections are not a good combination. We cleaned out the box and put duct tape over the hole in the bottom where the wires, and house sparrows, entered it.

            Within hours, we had robins in the yard again. They were our robins, the ones that don’t spook or attack us when we cross paths in the backyard. Within two days, there was most of a robin nest rebuilt on the ledge.

            Some of the dry grass the robins collected they pulled from the spots where puppy pee has killed the lawn, so we have the puppy to thank for making building materials so accessible.

            For years, I’ve heard that as cute as invasive house sparrows are, they steal nesting cavities from native birds like bluebirds, or the red-breasted nuthatches that nested across the street in a tree hollow the last two years. This year house sparrows have it.

           Otherwise, I’ve never seen a house sparrow nest in the wild, except for the old hollow trees in one corner of Lions Park. Mostly I’ve seen their messy nests sticking out of large commercial signs and other cavities of the human-built environment.

            This recent experience shows that house sparrows can interfere with nesting by birds that don’t use cavities, like robins.

            On to the next mystery: Why am I seeing gulls in Cheyenne this summer? Usually, they don’t get any closer to town than the landfill. There must be a new source of food around here, either trash or fish.

            Oh, and I saw a hummingbird in Lions Park at the back of the amphitheater. It was inspecting the railings, maybe for spider webs for making a nest? It’s about four weeks earlier than we see hummingbirds in town when they return from nesting in the mountains.

Fledge week

A robin in the Gorges backyard does some people watching. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Published July 2, 2022, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.

Fledge week observations entertain local birdwatcher

By Barb Gorges

            This summer I miss the company of our dog of 16 years, Sally, while gardening in the backyard.

One day at the end of May, I stopped to take a flower photo, crouching down at eye level, a little glad that she wasn’t around to photobomb my efforts. When I glanced off to the side, I realized I was also eye level with one of our robins, three feet away. He was watching me intently. I took his picture and he didn’t even blink.

            At least once a spring I hear from folks who are being strafed by furious robins every time they try to use their front or back door because the robins have built their nest on the porch light and are very territorial about anyone coming near.

            This is the second year we’ve had robins nesting above our back door and where I was crouching was only a few feet away from it. We more often use the attached garage’s back door, but still, early June chores took me back and forth a lot, and the robins were courteous. I tried to return the favor, stopping whenever our paths were about to cross so as not to delay their delivery of worm meat to the young in the nest.

            Serendipitously, my garden digging coincided with the robins’ hunt for food—I brought lots of tiny critters closer to the surface and watering transplants brought out the worms. Mark saw the young minutes after they fledged, and I saw one just once. I hope the neighbor’s cat didn’t get them. Sally, the bird dog, would have tried. As of June 20, the robins were incubating another set of eggs.

            The week before, two avian families arrived at our feeders. The only food out, besides the thistle in case a goldfinch comes by, is a chunk of suet-type stuff we stuck in one of those hanging cage feeders. A plain dark brown bird landed on the cage and stabbed at the brown stuff. There was something familiar about it, the bill, the shape—oh, baby starling! And then its two siblings and a parent showed up and it was like watching a human family with small children visit the ice cream shop. A lot of shuffling and bumping and to-ing and fro-ing.

Millions of starlings must go through this feeding performance every year—how else could there be millions of starlings out there to perform those “murmurations,” clouds of birds performing sky-high arabesques captured on videos playing on the internet?

            A few minutes later a small, plump, light brown bird landed on the cage, fluttering its wings. Its parent quickly followed, a male house sparrow—they are the ones with the black goatees. He pecked the suet stuff and fed the slightly smaller bird. Soon he was besieged by two more young, all three rapidly fluttering their wings, apparently the “feed me” signal. Nearly as amusing to watch was both families navigating our bird bath at the same time. Sparrow and starling shoulders bumped together.

            The Swainson’s hawk pair nested again in the neighbor’s spruce tree. Every time I walk the neighborhood, I see at least one adult flying. We think the pile of sticks and whitewash in our driveway in May and early June was the adults searching one of our overhanging silver maples for the perfect nesting materials, breaking off green sticks and dropping rejects.

            I was concerned that the new apartment building in the field adjacent to our neighborhood would be a problem for the hawks’ hunting, but this year the church’s gravel parking lot is home to a new colony of ground squirrels.

On June 16, one of the young hawks was trying to perch in our trees and was getting mobbed by blue jays.

            The red-breasted nuthatches returned to the nesting cavity in the mountain ash tree across the street. The mountain chickadee seems to have nested somewhere else this year—but can sometimes be heard singing.

            Before our shrubs leafed out, I saw a house wren checking out a tree cavity across the alley. Now he sings nonstop all day.   

            It’s hard to make myself take a walk without Sally, but there are plenty of friends and neighbors I meet when I do, including the wild animals.

Prairie bird safety

The Western Meadowlark, Wyoming’s state bird, nests on the ground, hidden in the prairie grasses. Photo by Mark Gorges.

How to keep prairie birds, and us, safe

“How to keep prairie birds, and us, safe” was published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle Feb. 5, 2022.

By Barb Gorges

            Nurturing the prairie was the theme of this year’s Cheyenne Habitat Heroes workshop held last month. For me, that includes the plants, animals and people.

            Cheyenne sits in the middle of the shortgrass prairie so what we “townies” do matters as well.

            Zach Hutchinson, workshop presenter and community science coordinator for Audubon Rockies, reminded us of the study showing North America has lost 2.9 billion birds, including 53 percent of grassland birds, since 1970. This means that for every 100 birds you could count along a certain distance of our county roads then, today you would only count 47.

            One of the biggest causes is loss of habitat, including the conversion of undeveloped land into subdivisions, commercial property or cropland. Cheyenne is going through a terrific building phase. The landscaping in new high density residential neighborhoods will soon draw in birds, but not the grassland birds. It is the ring of small-acreage landowners around the city who can make a difference.

            First, what shape is the acreage in? Is it full of native prairie grasses and what range managers call forbes, which the rest of us call wildflowers? Or was it overgrazed and is now full of invasive weeds like toadflax and needs renewal?

Another workshop speaker, Aaron Maier, range ecologist for Audubon Rockies, talked at length about regenerative agriculture and how farmers are changing their practices so they spend less on fertilizers and trips with the tractor yet sequester more carbon, capture more moisture and accumulate more beneficial soil microbes.

Aaron also talked about healthy grassland grazing practices benefitting wildlife as well, as laid out by the Audubon Conservation Ranching Initiative. Ranchers following Audubon’s guidelines for best practices for land, wildlife and livestock management are guaranteed premium prices for their product marked as “Audubon Certified.”

But the small acreage owner is probably not going to be grazing cattle. In fact, without 30-36 acres and a seasonal rotation plan, they can’t even graze one horse for one year (without supplemental feed) but must keep them much of the year in a corral to avoid making their entire property into a dust bowl.

Not to say that there aren’t grassland birds that sometimes enjoy bare ground—after all, they evolved alongside the buffalo, famous for creating mosaics of bare ground in their migrations.

A lot of small acreage owners don’t have livestock, but they do have cats and dogs that can be very detrimental to grassland birds. It’s easy to see how, once you realize grassland birds nest on the ground.

The Chestnut-collared Longspur is another grassland ground nester that depends on having vegetation to hide its nest. Photo by Mark Gorges.

Horned larks, western meadowlarks, vesper sparrows, savannah sparrows and other grassland bird species have come up with various ruses and camouflages to avoid native predators. However, they haven’t evolved yet to deal with what the American Bird Conservancy considers to be an invasive species: cats.

Cats kill more than a billion birds a year in the U.S. Zach pointed out that popular “trap, neuter and release” programs have a flaw—they allow cats to go back outside and kill more native birds and small mammals. It’s a touchy subject. I admit to having been the owner of an indoor/outdoor cat up until 1990 when I started keeping my cat indoors. Four cats later, I’m a proponent of catios—screened outdoor areas—and taking leashed cats for walks.

Grassland birds nest sometime between April and July. That’s a good time to keep dogs on a leash so they won’t find and eat bird eggs. And it’s an excellent time to abstain from mowing both the previous year’s and current year’s growth. If you value wildlife, mow only after consulting the professionals over at the Laramie County Conservation District.

However, you may want to forgo much vegetation around your house and outbuildings. The national Firewise program, firewise.org, has guidelines for protecting property from fire on the forest edges as well as in the grasslands.

And what can us townies do for grassland birds? Use less energy. Buy less new stuff. Every energy source I can think of has been detrimental to wildlife: harvesting whale oil, excavating peat, cutting firewood as well as producing the climate-changing fumes of coal, oil and natural gas and the toxic residue of nuclear, and building the cleaner but often habitat and migration-disrupting installments of hydro, wind and solar power.

It seems as soon as we come up with energy saving changes—like families having fewer children and more efficient appliances, someone invents something like the new energy-intensive game of cryptocurrency mining. Don’t mind me, I’m a trifle depressed after watching a new movie, the very dark comedy, “Don’t Look Up.”

But I plan to look up—spring bird  migration will commence any day now.

Barb Gorges is the author of “Cheyenne Birds by the Month,” www.YuccaRoadPress.com.

Horned Larks also are grassland ground nesters. Photo by Mark Gorges.

   

Xxx

Swainson’s hawks fledge

Neighborhood Swainson’s hawks fledge three; fall migration underway

Published Aug. 14, 2021, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.

One of the Swainson’s Hawk parents brings food to the young July 7, 2021, at a nest in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Photo by Mark Gorges.

By Barb Gorges

            Just as they did last year, a pair of Swainson’s hawks nested in the neighbors’ spruce tree two houses down.

            Thanks to some tree pruning in between, Mark and I had a perfect view of the nest from our bathroom window.

            I’m sure the hawks were a little put out this spring to discover after their long migratory haul from Argentina that the field adjacent now sports a three-story apartment building under construction. But about a quarter mile away is the Greenway and the railroad right of way, still plenty of open space and tasty ground squirrels.

            By July 7 we could see two fuzzy white heads in the nest. Nearly three weeks later they were mostly brown. And then the youngsters started climbing out of the nest and onto the tree branches. That’s when we realized there were three of them.

            We think the day one of the juveniles left the nest for the first time was July 25. At 6 a.m., it was sitting on a bare branch just over our back wall, looking straight back at us through the kitchen window.

There were a few days the youngsters cried a lot for parental attention. One day they landed in our tree and then all three circled low over our block. It’s become quieter, but they are still spending time in the neighborhood, sometimes on the nest tree.

            It amazes me that a large hawk, best suited for flying grasslands in search of rodents (summer) and large insects (winter), would choose to nest in a residential neighborhood. I’m glad we can provide the big trees they require to successfully breed.

Hummingbirds

            The hummingbirds are a mystery this year. Their favorite red beebalm was halfway through blooming the last week in July and I hadn’t seen them yet.  

I checked my records on eBird.org and saw since 2013 they have arrived for a three-week stay starting the last week of July or the first week of August. My beebalm is blooming ahead of schedule and they may miss it. I caught a glimpse of one hummingbird July 30 as it flitted quickly over other flowers.

Maybe the red beebalm is early this year because of all our earlier hot weather and moisture. Maybe the broad-tailed hummingbirds are later because our mountains, where they nest, have been unusually full of nectar-filled flowers and they are staying longer.

Maybe we should all put up our hummingbird feeders anyway. Remember, use a little heat to dissolve 1 part white sugar in 4 parts water. Use no other sugar types, use no red dye, and replace any nectar that gets cloudy-looking.

Weidensaul’s new book

Mark and I are reading “A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds” by Scott Weidensaul. A whole chapter is devoted to Swainson’s hawks and unraveling the mysteries of their breeding and migration using new tracking technology.

The book also discusses the number of ways migrating birds are killed by human actions, directly and indirectly, that are preventable.

            For instance, because many songbirds migrate at night, one of their navigational aids is starlight. Unfortunately, the glow from cities is attracting them and studies show more migrants in cities than there used to be. But when the small birds land in the mornings, are they finding the trees and shrubbery full of insects they need to eat to recharge? Sometimes, they find well-lit skyscrapers and become disoriented, circling until exhausted, falling to the ground, discovered dead on the sidewalk in the morning.

            City night light is detrimental to other life too, including plants and people without room-darkening shades. It increases with each porch and parking lot light left on. But it can also be decreased by one resident, one business owner and one municipality at a time.

For your home security lighting, see if you can use motion detection technology. You’ll save money on your electric bill. For parking lot lights and streetlights, chose those that are hooded, lighting only what’s below and not the sky. You’ll save money, too.

Without our own astronomical observatory, like Flagstaff, Arizona, I don’t think we will become an International Dark Sky City, asking Cheyennites to drive with only parking lights on, but it would be neat.

            Fall migration has already begun. The Swainson’s hawk family will head south sometime after the middle of September. Only six or eight weeks after fledging, the young Swainson’s all over western North America make a journey of as much as 7,000 miles to the Argentine pampas. I imagine it looks something like Wyoming grasslands there. Safe travels, kids and parents.

Robin close encounters

Robin family members pant on a hot day. Photo by Mark Gorges.

Close encounters of the robin kind

By Barb Gorges

            You could say that the robins in our backyard are benefitting from global warming this summer.

            After 32 years managing without it, Mark and I had air conditioning installed and the robins discovered it offered a good nesting location.

            We normally can keep things comfortable by closing windows before the outside temperatures get hotter than the inside, plus the basement stays chilly. But with warmer and sometimes smokier summers, it seemed like the right time to invest in heat pump technology, referred to as a mini-split. It also provides heat and can be hooked up to a solar electric system someday.

            The robins built their whole nest before we were aware. It is on top of the new conduit in the corner by the back door we don’t use much. With the roof overhang, it is well protected.

I’ve heard about robins building nests on porch lights and attacking anyone who goes in and out the associated door. Gardening takes us back and forth below this nest location, but neither robin parent divebombed us or the dog. Mark even put up our 8-foot stepladder once to take a photo and there were no complaints.

Every time I glanced at the nest when a parent was on it, incubating the eggs, staring at me, I’d apologize for another disruption.

Finally, the day came when I noticed, looking out the kitchen window, that one of the parents was pausing on one of our fence posts with a big juicy, bright green caterpillar in its beak. There were many more treats for the nestlings, but caterpillars seemed the most popular.

It takes a lot of herbivorous prey to raise baby robins and I wondered what plant damage the robins were averting this summer. Gosh, it might have been the right year for growing cabbages. My last efforts were aborted by caterpillars.

By June 19, there was one large nestling left in the nest, almost filling it. By June 20, the nest was empty. I didn’t see any speckle-breasted baby robins anywhere.

I went to the corner of the yard by the compost bins to re-pot houseplants. As I approached, a robin flew in, perching on a branch eye level with me. I stopped and we looked each other in the eye. I murmured congratulations in case it was one of our parent robins. Then it flew to a new perch a few feet away and I turned, and we locked eyes again.

Most wild animals are interested in staying away from people unless we are handing out food. Otherwise, they don’t encourage our attention because that is often dangerous.

The robin shifted position again, caught my eye, and then flew off around the upright junipers. I could hear again the quiet call it had been making, on the other side of the bushes, plus another odd one. So, I circled the junipers and when I got to the point where I could see into the interior, there was the fledgling.

Unlike a killdeer which tries to draw you away from its nest, I felt like the robin had led me to the fledgling. Minutes later the fledgling flashed away to another shrub, but I didn’t go in pursuit.

Within a week, June 26, I saw a robin sitting on the nest again. Less than three feet away, a male house sparrow with a beak full of dry grass waited patiently for the robin to take a break. His mate waited behind him. I know we have a housing shortage in Cheyenne, but does the robin have a spare room, or what?

We still have a feeder hanging over the patio, under the clear corrugated plastic roof. It’s one of those cage types that uses the blocks of seed that seem to be glued together. The red-breasted nuthatches visit it multiple times a day, pecking away.

A pair of these birds nested in a rotten stub on a tree across the street. We think these are the birds flying over our low house to our feeder. On June 25, I saw five nuthatches on the feeder, probably the whole family dining together. They are completely at home. In fact, as I walk back and forth doing chores, I sometimes remember to look up to where, two or three feet over my head, a nuthatch is completely unconcerned by my presence, or that I’ve stopped so close.

Maybe, like the geese in the park, they read body language and distinguish between danger and safety.    

Family time for birds

“Summertime is family time for birds,” was published August 2, 2020 in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.

A Rufous Hummingbird tests nectar production of a red variety of beebalm, or Monarda, I grow in our backyard. Photo by Mark Gorges.

By Barb Gorges

            I asked one of our sons if he’d done any interesting birdwatching lately. He said no, it isn’t as exciting as during spring migration.

            I would disagree. Return migration starts up in mid-July. Migrating shorebirds were at the Wyoming Hereford Ranch Reservoir #1 then, while low water levels made their favorite mudflats.

            One sure sign of impending autumn is the hummingbirds coming into town. My red beebalm’s first flower was in bloom for about two days when it attracted the first broad-tailed hummingbird July 11. It was finished nesting in the high country and it, or other broadtails, made daily visits for 10 days. Then, a male rufous hummingbird returning from breeding—maybe in northwest Canada—came by. As the beebalm reached its peak, we had a hummingbird buzzing in every daylight hour or so, checking the flowers’ recharge of nectar and mostly ignoring the hummingbird feeder.

            However, birdwatching in my neighborhood in July and August is more about family drama.

Kids are naturally noisy and the Swainson’s hawks in the nest two yards down are no exception. One of the young took a tumble and landed on a branch several feet below the nest, which is set in the top of a spruce. It cried all day, but I think it climbed back up because it looked like there were two young back on the nest July 24.

            One day I thought one of the young Swainson’s had fledged and was sitting in our tree. I could hear a slightly off rendition of the call, maybe like a young bird still practicing, but couldn’t spot it at all. Later, I realized it was a blue jay doing imitations. And then there were the three blue jays flitting through our backyard that didn’t sound like full-fledged blue jays. They weren’t. Husband Mark’s photo showed one still had puffy baby feathers on its rump.

            July and August are when many plants bear fruit here. Whole extended families of robins strip our chokecherries even though I don’t think the fruit is ripe yet.

In the neglected front yard around the corner there’s a wonderful crop of thistle. Usually it’s the American goldfinches helping themselves but the other day there was a lesser goldfinch, which is not as common. Both are species that nest later than other songbirds because they are waiting to feed their young chewed up thistle seed instead of insects, like the other songbird parents.

            If you keep your eyes open, you may see parents feeding young, even after they’ve fledged, like the yellow warblers we saw along Crow Creek. And, when you see five house wrens hanging around the same willow tree, you know they are siblings who haven’t dispersed yet.

            Young crows take longer to mature. One of the smarter species of birds, not everything they need to know is hard-wired in their brain. They must learn it. After my cleaning the other day, my dental hygienist and I peered out the window wondering just why the young crow was rolling a rock-like object around—sorry, didn’t think to bring binocs to my appointment.

            One surprise this summer has been the number of mourning doves. Within a few years of the first sighting of Eurasian collared-doves in Wyoming, here in Laramie County in 1998, we quit seeing mourning doves breeding in our neighborhood. But this summer if we look closely at the doves on the wires, many have the mourning dove’s pointy-tailed silhouette. Perhaps they’ve finally learned to compete with the collared-doves for nest sites.

            For some species, their parental duties are already finished and they are free to flock around Cheyenne with their pals. The other morning, I estimated there were 150 common grackles carrying on boisterously in treetops and on lawns. Eventually, they will head south.

            If bird behavior interests you, read Jennifer Ackerman’s new book, “The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent and Think.” Ackerman writes, in a very readable way, about the latest science that is discovering that birds approach those five kinds of behaviors in myriad ways.

            I flipped to the section on parenting. From egg shape to nest shape to who feeds the young and how they are protected, birds have evolved strategies to suit their environment.

But it isn’t always an eons-long process. If they aren’t successful with a nest in one location one year, they may move to a different location the next.

Or they knock people on the head if they suspect they’ve harmed their chicks, like the Australian magpie does. And those birds can remember people for 20 years. Yikes.

            Thankfully, our birds are easier to live with, especially when we preserve prairie habitat and enhance the city forest, letting them enrich our lives.    

Flock of bird book reviews

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Flock of bird books arrives this spring: Peterson, Heinrich, Kroodsma, Gilbert and Tallamy

Published April 5, 2020, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, “Flock of bird books arrives this spring.”

By Barb Gorges

            Spring is when Houghton Mifflin Harcourt likes to send out bird books to review—completely forgetting that as spring migration gets going, birders have less time to read. Maybe we’ll have more time to read this year. Luckily, birding in Wyoming, without Audubon field trips, is a solitary experience perfect for ensuring huge social distances.

            I’ve suggested that we all get social sharing our bird sightings on the Cheyenne-High Plains Audubon Society group Facebook page and through the Wyobirds Google Group. By posting sightings on eBird.org, everyone can “Explore” each other’s Laramie County bird sightings.

Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America, Roger Tory Peterson (and contributions from others), 2020, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 505 pages, $29.99.

This latest edition of the classic field guides follows the 2008 edition, the first to combine Peterson’s eastern and western guides in one book. And now the birds of Hawaii have been added.

            Peterson died in 1996 so additional paintings, range map editing, etc. are the work of stellar artists and ornithologists. Bird names are updated, now showing the four species of scrub-jays, except that I heard last month it was decided to drop the “scrub” from their names.

            But, to be a birder, one must regularly invest in the most up-to-date field guide.

White Feathers, The Nesting Lives of Tree Swallows, Bernd Heinrich, 2020, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 232 pages, $27.

            If anyone can make eight springs of excruciatingly detailed observations interesting, Bernd Heinrich can. He wanted to know what purpose is served by tree swallows adding white feathers to their nests.

            Every spring, hour after hour, he observed the comings and goings of pairs using his nest box and noted when they brought in white feathers to line (insulate?) and cover (hiding eggs from predators?) the nest inside the box.

            Or, the white feathers might only advertise that a nesting cavity is taken. 

Birdsong for the Curious Naturalist, Your Guide to Listening, Donald Kroodsma, 2020, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 198 pages, $27.

            Here’s where you can find out what a tree swallow sounds like when it starts singing an hour before sunrise.

            In fact, you can skip this book and learn a lot by going to the associated free website, www.BirdsongForTheCurious.com. There are multiple songs each of most songbird species, as well as ideas for collecting your own data.

            The book has chapters explaining topics such as: “Why and How Birds Sing,” How a Bird Gets Its Song” and “How Songs Change over Space and Time.”

Unflappable, Suzie Gilbert, 2020, https://www.suziegilbert.com/.

            I read the first chapter for free online and I think it will be a very entertaining novel. Here’s the synopsis: “Wildlife rehabber Luna and Bald Eagle Mars are on a 2,300-mile road trip with her soon-to-be-ex-husband and authorities hot on their heels. What could possibly go wrong?”

Nature’s Best Hope, A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard, Douglas W. Tallamy, 2019, Timber Press, 255 pages, $29.95.      

            Tallamy first wrote “Bringing Nature Home” in 2007 where, as a professor who studies insects and ecology, he explains that it is important for all of us to plant native plants to benefit native wildlife.

            Thirteen years later, Tallamy can cite a lot more research making his point: native plants support native insects which support other native wildlife (and support us). For instance, almost all songbird species, even if they are seed eaters the rest of the year, need to feed their young prodigious amounts of caterpillars plus other insects.

            These caterpillars of native butterflies and moths can’t eat just any old plant. They must chew on the leaves of the plants they evolved with—other leaves are inedible. Good news: rarely does the associated plant allow itself to be decimated.

            Native bees, except for some generalists, also have a nearly one on one relationship with the native nectar and pollen-producing plants they’ve evolved with. You may see bees working flowers of introduced plants, but chances are they are the introduced European honeybees.

            What’s a concerned backyard naturalist to do? Become part of Tallamy’s army of gardeners converting yards and wasted spaces of America into Homegrown National Park, http://www.bringingnaturehome.net/. A link there will take you to the National Wildlife Federation’s Native Plant Finder which lists our local natives based on our zipcodes.

            It’s not necessary to vanquish every introduced plant, but we must add more natives. The best way is by replacing turf. Here in Cheyenne, the Board of Public Utilities is encouraging us to save water by replacing water-thirsty bluegrass with water-smart plantings. Plants native to our arid region (12-15 inches of precipitation annually) fit the bill perfectly—and they aid our native pollinators at the same time.

            In next Sunday’s Cheyenne Garden Gossip column, I will discuss exactly how to do that here.

Nestling ID crowd sourced

Two nestlings were photographed by Matthew Gill Aug. 6, 2019, at a well pad near Greeley, Colorado.

Published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle Sept. 15, 2019, “Nestling ID benefits from crowd sourced help.”

By Barb Gorges

            Cheyenne resident Priscilla Gill emailed me a bird photo that her son, Matthew Gill, took Aug. 6. Could I identify the birds?

            Digital technology is wonderful. Thirty years ago, I would get phone calls asking for ID help (and I still do) but it can be difficult to draw a mental picture. I must figure out how familiar with birds the callers are so I can interpret the size and color comparisons they make.

            At least with an emailed photo, the ease of identifying the bird is only dependent on the clearness and how much of the bird is showing. In this case, the photo clearly showed two little nestlings so ungainly they were cute. They were black-skinned, but all a-prickle with yellow pin feathers and had large, lumpy black bills. They were nestled on top of a platform of sticks balanced high up on the pipe infrastructure at a well pad.

            Those bills first made me think ravens. However, the nest was near Greeley, Colorado, where ravens are rarely seen.

            Digital photos are easy to share. I forwarded the photo to Greg Johnson, my local go-to birder who enjoys ID challenges. But after a couple days without a reply, I figured he was somewhere beyond internet contact, so I sent the photo on to Ted Floyd, Colorado birder and editor of the American Birding Association magazine.

            He had no idea. No one has ever put together a field guide for nestlings. Julie Zickefoose comes close with her book, “Baby Birds: An Artist Looks into the Nest” (my review: https://cheyennebirdbanter.wordpress.com/2016/05/30/watching-one-bird-at-a-time/), where she sketched nestlings of 17 species at regular intervals.

            Ted suggested I post the photo to the ABA’s Facebook group, “What’s this bird?”

            Meanwhile, Greg was finally able to reply: mourning dove. They only have two young per nest, and they build stick nests.

            By this time, I had joined the Facebook group and was starting to get replies. It’s a little intimidating—there are 39,000 people in the group.  There were 13 replies and 37 other people “liked” some of those replies, essentially voting on their ID choice.

I was surprised to see a reply from someone I knew, my Seattle birding friend, Acacia. Except for the person who suggested pelicans (based on the enormous bills), the replies were split between mourning dove and rock pigeon. I was most confidant about the reply from the woman who had pigeons nest on her fire escape.

            On reflection, “pigeon” seemed to make more sense, and Greg agreed. Pigeons are known for adapting to cities because the buildings remind them of cliffs they nest on in their native range in Europe and Asia. It seems odd to think of them nesting in the wild, but there’s a flock around the cliffs on Table Mountain at the Woodhouse Public Access Area near Cheyenne. Mourning doves and Eurasian collared-doves, on the other hand, are more likely to hide their nests in trees.

            But birds can sometimes adapt to what we humans present them with. Short of following the nestlings until they can be identified via adult plumage, or comparing them to photos of nestlings that were then followed to adulthood, we can’t say for sure which species they were.

            Out there in the open, did these two make it to maturity? I wonder how easy it would be for hawks to pick off both the parents and young.

            Here in Cheyenne at the end of August, I’ve noticed the field by my house has gotten very quiet at ground level—virtually no squeaking ground squirrels anymore. However, many mornings I’m hearing the keening of the two young Swainson’s hawks probably responsible for thinning that rodent population. The youngsters and parents sit on the power poles and watch as my friend Mary and I walk our dogs past.

            The two kids have even been over to visit at Mark’s and my house. One evening while out in the backyard I happened to look up and see the two sitting on opposite ends of the old TV antenna that still sways atop its two-story tower. That gives new meaning to the term “hawk watching.” They leave white calling card splats on the patio so I know when I’ve missed one of their visits.

Two young Swainson’s hawks find balance on TV antenna tower. Note two house finches also on the antenna. They were very vocal about the large intruders. Photo by Mark Gorges.

Young Swainson’s hawk finds a perch on 50-year-old TV antenna in the Gorges backyard. Photo by Mark Gorges.

Another day, as I did backyard chores accompanied by the dog, one of them sat in one of our big green ash trees, sounding like it was crying its heart out—maybe it was filled with teenage angst, knowing how soon it needed to grow up and fly to the ancestral winter homeland in the Argentinian grasslands.

Bird families

This somewhat shy Great Horned Owl family was a highlight in June at the Bioblitz held this year at Bear River State Park outside Evanston, Wyoming. The Bioblitz is sponsored by the University of Wyoming Biodiversity Institute, Audubon Rockies, The Nature Conservancy and other agencies and organizations. Photo by Mark Gorges.

Bird families expanding in summer

By Barb Gorges

            Early summer exploded with babies. In addition to our family adding the first baby of the new generation (do wild animals relate to their grand-offspring?), I noticed a lot of other baby activity.

            Driving past Holliday Park at twilight at the end of June I caught a glimpse of what looked like three loose dogs. They were a mother racoon and two young scampering across the lawn.

            Walking our dog around the field by our house I saw a ground squirrel mother herd a youngster out of the street and back to the safety of the grass. There’s also an explosion of baby rabbits in that field driving everyone’s dogs crazy.

            We have a pair of Swainson’s hawks nesting in our neighborhood and they are using the field as their grocery store. I’m not sure exactly where they are nesting, but I’m guessing it is one of the large spruce trees. Whenever I’m at the field, I catch a glimpse of at least one hunting. But I also glimpse them from my kitchen window soaring, meaning I can add them to my eBird.org yard list. The yard list is all the species I’ve seen from the window or while out in the yard. The Swainson’s have put me at 99 species so far—over about 12 years.

            When it warmed up, we spent more time in our backyard and I noticed other signs of family life. We always have a raucous community of tree squirrels, one generation indistinguishable from the next, chasing each other round and round in our big trees.

            This year I’ve been hearing a mountain chickadee sing. No, not the “chick-a-dee-dee-dee” call—that’s their alarm call—but a sweet three-note song (listen at https://www.allaboutbirds.org/).

            I’m also learning the various phrases American goldfinches use while they spend the summer with us. We’ve left our nyger thistle seed feeder up for them (no, nyger thistle is not our noxious weed and it is treated not to sprout). They sometimes come as a group of four, including two males and two females, and sometimes a younger one.

            The downy woodpeckers have been visiting as well. They go for one of those blocks of seed “glued” together that you buy at the store. You would think they would go for bugs hiding in the furrowed bark of the tree trunks. Maybe they do, in addition to the seed block.

            The robins have been busy. I observed a youngster walking through my garden as it tried to imitate the foraging action of the nearby adult, but it finally resorted to begging to be fed.

            Within the space of a couple days I was contacted about two problem robins attempting to build nests on the tops of porch lights. Porch lights, because they usually provide a shelf-like surface under the safety of the roof overhang, are quite popular. But not everyone trying to use the adjacent door likes getting dive-bombed by the angry robin parents.

            In the first situation, Deb, our former neighbor, said the robin was trying to build a nest on a porch light with a pyramidal top. The bird could not make her nest stick and all the materials from all her attempts slid off and accumulated on the porch floor. Providing another ledge nearby might not have worked for such a determined bird. Instead, Deb opted for screening off the top of the light. Hopefully Mama Robin found a better location in Deb’s spruce trees.

            Our current neighbor, Dorothy, texted me the next day, wondering what she and her family were going to do about being attacked by the robin which had built a nest on her (flat-topped) front porch light. Maybe avoid walking out the front door and walk out through the garage instead, I said. I asked her if she had a selfie stick so she could take pictures of the inside of the nest to show her two young boys.

            Down at Lions Park a new colony of black-crowned night-herons has been established. Listen for them behind the conservatory. The colony at Holliday Park is still going strong.

            In the far corner of Curt Gowdy State Park, I caught a glimpse of a bird family I hadn’t seen together before. Way up on the nasty El Alto trail, I saw a brown songbird I couldn’t identify readily. And then the parent came to feed it, a western tanager. The youngster has a long way to go before attaining either the look of its mother, if female, or if male, the bright yellow body with black and white wings and the orange head like its father.