[cobirds] Grandview Cemetery on 12July2024 (Larimer)

Against my better judgement, I went to Grandview Cemetery in Fort Collins in late afternoon yesterday, 12 July 2024.  The temperature was right at 100 degrees F and I wanted to see how the living things at this site were coping.  The following were the most notable:

 

• An active broad-tailed hummingbird nest I’ve been monitoring showed the beaks of hatchlings.  Prior to yesterday my brief checks seemed to indicate, without being able to see into the nest cup, the eggs had not hatched yet.  When I got there yesterday the female was in the nest, with two tiny beaks pointed skyward beside her.  The adult left, presumably to obtain food for the nestlings.  The picture shows the young with their beaks open.  Since the female had not yet returned when the photo was taken (which she did shortly after), I believe they were panting the way hot birds do, rather than begging.

 

 

 

• An adult mourning dove was found in obvious distress (panting) under a peony next to a headstone.  I picked it up and carried it a short distance to a puddle of sprinkler irrigation water.  The bird did not drink but strongly flew away.
• A man and his dog were in the irrigation ditch.  I assumed they were hunting the golf balls that sometimes end up there.  He told me his dog (one of the crossbreeds called “Cur”) liked to hunt crayfish.  Apparently the dog seizes them, shakes them, and lets them go to swim/pinch another day.  
• A fox squirrel was lying across the top of a headstone.  I felt the stone, and while not cool, it was definitely cooler than the ambient air temperature.  I sometimes see this same behavior on sunny winter days when the headstones are warmer than the ambient temperature.

 

 

• A white-breasted nuthatch was foraging in spruce and had the smudgy face of an overworked parent that’s been feeding young non-stop.  I interpret the smudges as meaning some of its foraging occurs on American elm branches covered with the black sooty mold that develops in trees with chronic European elm scale infestation.  The scales secrete a sugary excrement called honeydew rains down and serves as a substrate for the mold.

 

 

Dave Leatherman

Fort Collins