[cobirds] 5 Vireo Day at Crow Valley

Went to Crow Valley today with Nina Routh.  We didn't get there until 10:30am and birded until 3.  Birdy enough to be interesting for the first part, with lot of newly arrived Wilson's Warblers and Chipping Sparrows.  While eating lunch at the main picnic shelter, Joe Mammoser walked up and said he had just seen a Blue-headed Vireo about 20 yards beyond the point where Nina and I broke off the loop for some food.  Grateful for the intel, we finished eating and headed over to the area in the northwest corner of the campground.  If you walk east from the group area you come to a point where the trail heads north to the pond with the Russian-olive overtopping it and the gate to the Mourning Dove Trail/dispersed camping.  Right where the trail just east of the Group Area heads north is a grove of Siberian elms.  In the channel of Crow Creek is a remnant puddle of water.  The vireo was here working a fairly wide circle of the elms getting that favorite of "solitary" vireos, adult rough stink bugs (Brochymena sp.).  I even saw the vireo eat an egg cluster of rough stink bug.See July 2014 issue of "Colorado Birds" for a discussion of these interesting insects. 

Also in this same area were the other four vireo species: Plumbeous, Cassin's, Red-eyed, and Warbling.  We also had one male Townsend's Warbler, one early Yellow-rumped Warbler, several MacGillivray's Warblers (at least 6 along the south and west riparian zone) and one Orange-crowned Warbler.  Joe said he had a Yellow-breasted Chat.  We had a fair number of empids including Least, Gray and Dusky that we could identify.  An Olive-sided Flycatcher and Western Wood-Pewee worked dead elm tree tops.  A few Western Tanagers foraged in elms, presumably on Elm Leaf Beetle larvae.  In the southwest corner (sw of the junipers) we had an early immature White-crowned Sparrow hanging with one Clay-colored, or was it the other way around?  No thrushes.  No solitaires.  No sapsuckers or Red-headed.

Not a ton of diversity (only 29 species or so) but some keepers.  Vireos are underrated.  We thank Joe for coming over to tell us about the Blue-headed.

The campground was beginning to fill up but was not crazy busy (yet).

Dave Leatherman

Fort Collins