COLORADO BIRD REPORT

It’s almost summer and with the change of seasons comes exciting developments in THE WORLD OF BIRDS
(all data in the COLORADO BIRD REPORT was gathered from the square half-mile around my house)

* There was a MAGPIE on my street.  Your basic, central casting magpie.  Sighted on the neighbors fence and then flying away from it.  Notably the first magpie I have seen in Delta County since 2017.  What does it mean?

* There was a large CORVID (either a big crow or a raven) on a telephone pole.  He was croaking.  He flew away in the same general direction as the magpie.  What does it mean?

* My neighbor across the way knocked down a shed, extending my line of sight from the road where I walk the dogs, revealing PHEASANTS and GROUSE.  They are big and fancy with a bunch of colors.  

* The same neighbor’s PEACOCKS had babies.  There are all-white peacock babies and ‘regular color’ peacock babies.  There is even a half-white, half-regular color peacock baby.  I think that means that the white peacocks are not albino.  My elementary school bird education taught me that male peacocks are fancy and female peacocks are plain looking.  This is not the case.  Female peacocks are also very fancy as far as I am concerned.

* Rich’s sharecropper (i think that’s the right term for that relationship) cut down the first alfalfa on Saturday, destroying several acres of cover for small mammals.  SMALL OWLS and HAWKS could be seen helping themselves to the population of newly exposed and fleeing field mice for a day or so.  They make it look easy, and maybe it is, for them.

* A MORNINGDOVE has made a nest on top of the swamp cooler around back of the building.  I do not know if she will be disturbed by the HVAC TECHNICIAN when he comes to turn all that on.  The dove projects an aura that is somehow equal parts terrified and unintimidated when you walk by it, and makes the normal dove noises from TV and movies.