The cemetery was beautiful and full of interesting things today:
Confirmed the very recent hatch of two young in the tripledecker Broad-tailed Hummingbird nest
Watched a different female hummer near her first-time nest flycatching for mosquitoes
FOY fledged American Robin and Chipping Sparrow
Youth gangs of European Starlings with too much time, everywhere in the grass
Got photos of the last Chipping Sparrow nestling in the nest at the end of a low Colorado Blue Spruce branch
Photographed parent Chipping Sparrow feeding a recently fledged youngster a combination of vegetable matter (new leaf?) and yellow insect larvae
Found all three sibling Great Horned Owls from this year's nest together on a green ash branch some 100 yards from their birthplace elm (wonder when they'll split up?)
Saw a Common Grackle carrying something big from the flowing ditch to the base of a lilac (shooed off the bird and found a live, medium-sized crayfish! Once I saw a grackle eating a crayfish but suspected it was an act of scavenging. Maybe grackles routinely catch live crayfish.)
FOY young fox running across the golf course
Western Wood-Pewee working over the ditch for millers (about every other year pewees nest at Grandview)
Watched newly-fledged Black-capped Chickadees and White-breasted Nuthatches work on their foraging skills
FOY White-spotted Sawyer (large longhorned beetle) landed on me (my trunk must look dead or dying, or else it sensed every woodpecker in the place would love to eat it for lunch and I represented a safe haven)
Eurasian Collared-Doves nest-building
Mourning Dove gathering nest material
Great Blue Heron at nearby Sheldon Lake (at City Park) caught and immediately ate a nice 10" rainbow trout about 20 yards from two fishermen
American Crow took a big robin nestling from a nest and ate it (major protest from not only the parent robins but also grackles)
Cedar Waxwings eating almost-ripe mulberries
Red-winged Blackbirds finding moths (not Army Cutworms = the miller) down in fairly tall park grass
Two-tailed Swallowtail laid a light green egg on a darker green ash leaflet
Heard both American and Lesser Goldfinches singing (and a starling mimicking an American)
Fox Squirrels fornicating at the onset of Brood #2 for 2012
The rooster down the alley accepted my offering of a big black field cricket today (a couple days ago, for the first time ever, it refused, preferring instead some rough-looking corn on the cob provided by its owner.)
Total of 36 species, just 2 shy of the all-time high (conceivable misses today were Red-tailed Hawk, Common Nighthawk, Cooper's Hawk, and Black-billed Magpie)
Dave Leatherman
Fort Collins
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