ACES Morning Birding at Rock Bottom Ranch 9/12/23

Migration brings so much diversity to areas rich in foods for birds. Pockets of activity on and around the ranch were exciting to find and worth the time we spent waiting to get good views of birds that were flitting around in the foliage. Our species total was 34 today. It was exciting to find two Black-throated Gray Warblers, one adult male and one female or juvenile, and later to find two Virginia’s Warblers and a couple of Wilson’s Warblers. Other highlights were the Western Flycatchers, several White-breasted Nuthatches on the same dead branch, and a singing Plumbeous Vireo. We watched Lewis’s Woodpeckers make many trips overhead as they flew between the scrub oak thickets and cottonwood forest on opposite sides of the main ranch. Coming from the oaks, they nearly always carried a single acorn in their bill. We observed them hammering these food items into features of the cottonwood bark, presumably for winter use. Join us tomorrow at Jaffee Park and Friday at the Moore Open Space where we hope to see other migratory flocks of interesting species!