Fruitless Blog Fodder

Despite the lack of recent posts I have been making every attempt to get some birdable blog content over the past week. Tuesday was miserable, but mild, with a dark overcast on the front of an advancing storm front. I had thought I would find a lot of foraging behavior, but the birds were eerily quiet, adding to the gloom. Wednesday brought dropping temps, steady winds and a snow storm that continued throughout the daylight hours. That one kept me in the office and out of the weather at lunch, so I could head home early and beat the nightmare traffic.
So yesterday found me bundled up, and enjoying the cold sunshine over a brilliant white background. I went back to the Singletree trail, the one I located for my entry two back. I was hoping that the sun direction would lead to even better shots of the Juncos I had seen previously.
A Coyote was present to welcome me again. This time I spotted the silhouette above the skyline as I was parking and relocated for the shot above heading uphill and into the sun. Unfortunately that meant no assistance in flushing anything from deep in the brush on the 'down-sun' side of the trail.


The birds were once again strangely quiet and hard to find. I did get a small flock of Black-capped Chickadees, who were also hanging around on the side of the trail facing directly into the sun. The picture above was the best bird shot I could pull from two walks over three days.

That is not to say that it has been a birdless week. My attention keeps returning to the large, mixed flocks of Canada and Cackling Geese who have descended on the fields surrounding my office. Repeated scans have not produced any oddballs, but I feel like they should be in there. Yesterday as I was talking on the cell and looking out a large window that faces west. As I took in the view a Merlin flew low across the view, and made a banking turn no more than 25 feet in front of me. Of course there was no chance for a shot, but a great moment. I had not previously seen a Merlin around my office, much less in Boulder County, so I will have to keep my eyes open on the surrounding area to see if I can relocate it and hopefully get some shots.

As I returned to the car I had a bit better angle to capture a Coyote as it climbed through a more gentle section of the bluff. My feeling was that this was a different individual. The one seen when I first arrived would have had to descend in the opposite direction from which it was headed and then be climbing back in the same direction. They sure do suffer a loss of their camouflage when the snow is covering a majority of the vegetation, but then they can probably track down a good bit of winter kill to snack on at these times as well.