08-05-13 Bird Field Note

08-05-13 Bird Field Note

August 5, 2013

Kate Stone's Field Note shares accounts of sandhill cranes, transmitters on osprey, and an unlucky rabbit.

08-05-13 Kate Stone Field Note

Female lazuli buntings lack the dramatic color and song of males, but have an easier time remaining hidden while sitting on a nest and raising young. This bunting led a group of three youngsters foraging in the shrubbery along Lower Woodchuck Creek.

Creek. I flushed over 20 wild turkey babies into shrubs and even to the tops of cottonwoods. Two mothers stayed on the ground, scolding me.

me. Despite the incessant begging of a nestling black-headed grosbeak, I still had a hard time seeing its cryptic nest in the willows.

Finding a warm, headless rabbit near dense shrubbery does not give me a comfortable feeling.

Begging calls alerted me to the location of a kestrel nest high in a cottonwood.

Two young peek out. The hole was empty two days later.

This baby kestrel eyes the floodplain from a hole in a cottonwood snag near the Guest House pond. In an hour filled with many prey deliveries, only the mother brought food to the nest. She carried grasshoppers and one vole.

Less than a day later, one young female jumped to an adjacent tree, two females “branched”, and one male and one female remained in the cavity.

Mom delivers food to one of the remaining nestlings.

Groups of sandhill cranes fly over the ranch every morning.

A great blue heron perches high in a cottonwood on the floodplain.

Osprey parents at both nests shade their youngsters during a week of >90° temperatures.

Raptor View Research Institute (RVRI) used a boom truck to access the chicks at the Entrance Nest. They worked early in the morning to avoid hot temperatures.