The Daily Birding Journal

I went to help some neighbors this morning.  We gathered the pairs into her corrals and sorted off the calves to get them ready for the buyers trucks.  In ranch country "neighboring" (swapping help between ranches on heavy work days) used to be the norm.  Some of my fondest memories growing up were attending brandings and gathers around or on my grandparents ranch.  Hard work, generally followed by good food, bonded people in a way that is hard to describe.  Being depended on and being dependable builds community that seems missing in much of modern life.  Even in these traditional ranching communities people have become more independent and more isolated from each other.  I don't mind gettin up a little early some mornings to help keep the tradtion alive. 

A dense morning fog was good for photography, but not so good for birding.  But as the fog lifted, the birding improved.  Migrants were common in the Kochea weeds and included both large flocks of Mountain and Eastern Bluebirds. Another migrant, seemingly interested in the same weedy fields, were American Pipits, whose flight calls gave away their location.

The birding surprise, however, was the 1st Ranch record of Sedge Wren at the RMBO Banding Station.  Although Sedge Wren breeds due north of Colorado, it is a rare migrant in the state, probably because it passes through undetected.  This was another species that was found in dense noxious weeds, this time in Canada thistle with an overstory of Russian olive.  This was a real treat and the bird, though a skulker, gave repeated good binocular views from very close range.

 

Conditions at Chico Headquarters Pond are currently excellent for observing migrant sparrows and shorebirds.  Water levels are low enough to expose mudflats around the enitre shoreline.  The inflow area on the east bank is a great spot to look at the edge of the northern marsh for both secretive marsh birds like Sora and Virginia Rail, who barely venture out of the vegetation to feed, and for viewing southbound shorebirds, now at the tailend of their long migration.

Yesterday, I watched an uncommon Pectoral Sandpiper feeding with a flock of the much larger Long-billed Dowitchers.  Long-billed Dowitcher is a common migrant in Colorado in Spring, but if you are new to birding you might not recognize it in the fall. 

In the photo here you can see three ages of Long-billed Dowitcher.  A brightly colored bird in breeding plumage from May is at the top.  The middle bird is a juvenile, as told by the rufous-edged feathers on the feather grouping called scapulars, contrasting with the dull gray nonbreeding or basic feathers.  The rufous-edged juvenal feathers will be replaced in the next month, so that the remaining plumage will be all gray, as in the bird at the bottom.  The birds will keep the basic plumage until increased daylight stimulates a small region of the birds'  brain to produce testosterone in male birds, and estrogen and another hormones in females, that will trigger another molt until the birds again look like the bird in the top photograph.

Long-billed Dowitcher breeds along the Arctic coast of Alaska and western Canada and winters along both of our coasts, the Gulf of Mexico, and along coastal Mexico and the northern Central America coasts.  Like all shorebirds in the large group of birds related to Long-billed Dowitchers, the scolopacids, they always lay four eggs, and never more.  Egg production requires a great deal of calcium and this species and other Arcitc nesting shorebirds ingest lemming teeth and small bones found lying on the tundra to overcome potential calcium deficiencies.

At Chico, there is occasionally a rarer species of dowitcher, Short-billed Dowitcher, that in all but its juvenal plumage, looks very similar to Long-billed.  Differences between the two dowitcher species will be the subject of a speparate post.

    Fall.  The leaves are changing in earnest now and a jacket is required morning and evening.  We trailed in the first big herd Monday morning and  weaned, vaccinated and shipped the calves.  Tuesday morning we started early, putting the cows through the chute and pregnancy checking, sorting the breds from the opens.  The opens were shipped, McDonalds anyone?  
     Next week we will bring in another herd for the same treatment except we will keep the weaned calves here.  The week after we ship yearlings, then another cow calf herd, then to the MZ for Bison processing, then back here for the Beefmasters.  Busy times ahead, but good.
     Thursday we were trailing a small herd of new cattle into Dry Creek when an afternoon squall wailed through, barely settling the dust, but throwing plenty of thunderbolts around.  As the storm passed I topped out on a little ridge to have a look around and saw we had a fire burning out near eastern part of the ranch.  From ten miles away I could see the red flames eating the sagebrush as the wind began to grow again , driving the fire north toward our boundry.  I pulled out my cell phone and started making calls.  I got hold of Dave and he headed toward the fire in a truck as we started the long trot home.
     By the time we got to headquarters the fire had switched directions.  At first it looked like it would burn back on itself and started to die but then the wind changed again and it blew up,  this time headed west.  I jump off my horse and into the grader and with directions from Dave and some neighbors who had come to help headed east to see if I could help cut fire lines.  By the time I got to the fire it was dark.  The long strings of flames were strung out all accross the sandhills, but the wind had died and the various crews were working their way along them with pumper trucks.  I worked for a couple hours blading a new fire line where the fire had jumped one cut ealier by a goverment grader.
    I was just thinking of leaving when I got a call from our neighbors Kenny and Jay.  Two flat tires, and they were already giving a ride to Dave, who also had two flats.  They flashed their lights so I could spot them and I headed out to pick them up.  It must have looked pretty odd, the four of us, in a road grader, driving accross the prairie in the dark, headed home.  
    The fired ended up burning a couple thousand acres, but only a couple hundred on us.  We did loose alot of fence, but it was really a pretty lucky break.  The herd we worked this week had left that pasture exactly one week before.