08-09-13 Field Note

08-09-13 Field Note

August 9, 2013

Kate Stone's Field Note reports on songbird banding, eastern kingbirds, and fledging Lewis's woodpeckers.

Chokecherries, serviceberries and hawthorn berries attract flocks of birds to the floodplain.

floodplain. With the departure of the chattering Bullock’s orioles, scolding eastern kingbirds fill the soundscape of the floodplain.

floodplain. A nestling peaks out of the last unfledged Lewis’s woodpecker nest. The earliest nest fledged the first week of July.

We first noticed Lewis’s woodpeckers nesting in this cottonwood this year. For the previous two years, they used a ponderosa pine snag about 15 m to the south (left) of the cottonwood. A prescribed fire in 2012 consumed that tree, and no woodpeckers nested in the area that year.

Osprey continue to sit on or near the new platform at the north end of the property.

In the past few weeks, beavers created a new dam on one of the floodplain sloughs. In just a few days, a nice pool of water amassed behind the dam.

A parent feeds one of several young northern rough-winged swallows.

A newly fledged red-naped sapsucker takes a break after a long flight to the top of a snag.

snag. Debbie cleans months of kestrel droppings from our floodplain acoustic monitoring station. She began recording the nocturnal flight calls of migrants this week.

week. We should detect migrating savanna sparrows on the acoustic monitors. I saw this one, plus a handful of vesper sparrows, flitting about the floodplain. Both species breed in upland, open habitats, but use the floodplain during spring and fall migration.

migration. I find the spotted, non-breeding plumage of European starlings more striking than their breeding plumage.

plumage. A dusky grouse family takes advantage of the grey water from the youth campsite at the rock quarry. At least four young followed their mother to the puddle.

A mountain chickadee peers into its nest cavity.

We gave up on the kestrel nest by the rock quarry after several weeks with no sign of the adults. Persistent observation pays off; this week I spotted this young male and a young female near the nest.