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Vermilion Flycatcher September 2020 Vermilion Flycatcher Bird of the Month Officers by Grace Hu$man President Hal Yocum This summer, we Vice President Grace Huffman were treated to a Secretary Sharon Henthorn very special sight at Treasurer Nancy Vicars 5ongmire 5a,e6 a Parliament Vacant male Vermillion Fly- catcher! Programs Warren Harden Recorder Esther M. Key ale Vermillion Fly7 Conserva%on Ann Sherman catchers loo, li,e B Grace Huffman Field Trips Nancy Vicars 8ery mas,ed bandits, )immy Woodard with a bright red Hal Yocum head and lower body and a dar, mas,, Bob Holbroo, wings, tail, and upper Newsle.er Patricia Velte side. Females are Publicity Doug Eide much more muted Historian Vacant with lots of brown and a %nge of color Refreshments Pa1 High near the base of the tail. And they9re small6 about 5.5 inches in length. Here in the Webmaster Patricia Velte US they are primarily found in the Southwest, and they winter along the Gulf Coast. But their range extends deeply into South America. Throughout their range there The Oklahoma City Audubon society are many different subspecies, including some with more gray than red= They love the open country, and can also o>en be found in stream corridors out in the desert, is neither a chapter of nor affiliated where they will usually nest. with Naonal Audubon. A>er nes%ng, they have been ,nown to wander, which is li,ely how the one ended up at 5ongmire 5a,e near Pauls Valley, OK. He arrived in early or mid7 )uly, and stayed un%l the end of August. Betsy Hac,er and I went to see him in late )uly, and he didn9t not disappoint. For up-to-date Oklahoma City Within 5 minutes of arriving at the boat doc,s where he hung out, we found him= Audubon news isit: And he put on quite a show, dar%ng bac, and forth catching bugs and doing display OKC-Audubon.org Aights. I9ve had a lot of lifers this year but this has been one of my favorites to this point= There will be no mee%ngs September through December. We hope to be able to meet early next year. President’s Perspec%ve The COVID SU ER OF 2020 Gree%ngs to all members. As you may have heard the officers have decided that it Cust not Din the cardsE to hold regular mee%ngs. We have got to wait un%l it is safe for all, young, old and all others including our spea,ers. So NO EETINGS IN SEPTE BER THROUGH DECE BER. We hope for an in7person mee%ng in )anuary Fremember )an. mee%ng is the 4th on7 day). If you are li,e me you found a way to go birding o>en at one of our great local metro birding hotspots 7 although not much but heat in the summer, and few birds. y local hotspot is itch Par,. Nothing exo%c, but BellIs Vireo, Painted Bun%ngs and hummingbirds F including 172 Blac,7chinned ones) helped the summer move along. Fish Crows and Belted King8shers, as well as most of the herons and egrets were seen daily. Usually I was alone, very easy to comply with social distancing that way. Several %mes in )uly and August four of us got to7 gether, for more eyes and ears at Rose 5a,e, S%nchcomb east and west, 5a,e Hefner, Arcadia south end and Silver 5a,e. In early )uly I made a trip to Denver, CO to ta,e an en%re car full of my oldest daughterIs DstuffD that we had been guardian of for nearly 20 years. I went by way of Kenton,OK F4 days) and then on to 5ongmont, CO. That is right near Roc,y moun7 tain Na%onal Par,. In Kenton I saw the summer resident pair of BRONKED COWBIRDS. Also Scaled Luail, Curved7billed Thrasher, Burrowing Owl, Bulloc,Is Oriole, and many other local birds there. While in CO at a bird sanctuary near Boulder I had Common Yellowthroats, Yellow, WilsonIs and VirginiaIs Warblers, and a pair of Osprey among others. y daughter Heather is a rather good birder herself. She and I spent an en%re day at 11,600 >. Guanella Pass Fnear Idaho Springs) searching for the White 7tailed Ptarmigan. We dipped on that elusive bird, but at least tal,ed to several hi,ers that had seen them that day. Did see a Clar,Is Nutcrac,er. Had a great day birding with my daughter and lunch atop the pass. On my return I stopped at the top of Raton Pass on I725 at a RV par, with many feeders and saw 4 species of humming7 birds6 Ruby7throated, Blac,7Chinned, Broad7tailed and Rufous. I then drove the bac, roads over )ohnsonIs esa Road to Capulin Vulcano where I saw Steller9s )ay, CassinIs Kingbird, American Kestrel, and SayIs Phoebe. issed the Woodhouse Scrub )ay Fcommon there) 7 darn. I managed 22 year birds for the en%re trip. COVID restric%ons did not stop this birder. Done safely and with great results. Finally wanted to tell you about an interes%ng ar%cle on the vision of hummingbirds. The author is a sensory ecologist, ary Casswell Stoddard of Princeton University in the Wall Street Journal , Tues. )uly 14, 2020, page A10. It seems that her research shows that hummers have addi%onal cones in their re%na that enables vision in the ultraviolet range. She monitored 6000 hummingbird visits to feeders over N years that were light shielded to only the UV range. The birds could always 8nd the Welcome to OKC Audubon one with the nectar no ma.er how many %mes they moved it. FSee graph illustra%on on page 8.) Eugene Rodrigues, Yu,on, OK (Hal A. )ocum Siobhan Gibbons, OKC Ron Bush, Choctaw, OK The birding in Caddo County had a be.er variety of From Eagles to Atlas habitat and more birds than King8sher County, which is September mostly farmland with few cree,s and ponds. And of 2020 course, the cIntosh County area had more species. By Pa1 uPny At the end of a dead end county lane near 5a,e Eufaula, we located a previously un,nown Bald Eagle Bac, in )une, nest, which we will add to our list for the 2021 nes%ng my birding sis7 season. We saw no eagles in the vicinity. In one of the ter, Nancy Vic7 King8sher County bloc,s, we did see an adult Bald Ea7 ars, and I 8n7 gle Aying across a 8eld. We have no%ced that although ished the suc7 we had veri8ed that Bald Eagles nested, when we revis7 cessful and en7 ited those nests, we didn9t see any eagles. tertaining moni7 toring of Bald Bobwhites are becoming more and more difficult to Eagle nests in 8nd, but we were delighted to see and hear them at the 5a,e several areas. Our favorite treat was to see one Eufaula and perched on a fence post at the roadside while he loudly King8sher/ proclaimed his territory. We hoped for a family group, Crescent areas. but that was not to be. We monitored exis%ng nests In the farmland area near the Dover arsh, which was and also found not in a designated atlas bloc,, there was a large heron a few new ones roo,ery. This roo,ery was about a mile from our area, on our own that so what we saw there we were not able to count, but were previously un,nown. The eagles completed their nes%ng large Aoc,s of Ca.le Egrets were Aying to and from the cycle and that proCect ended for this spring, so now we were roo,ery, so we could count them on our list. ready to tac,le the Su.on Center9s atlasing proCect across the state. As birders, we really were not affected by the pandemic Even though at a glance, the King8sher County area and the many restric%ons on our RnormalE ac%vi%es. We rarely appeared to be rather mundane, it9s interes%ng how encountered other humans, since we were mostly wor,ing in many species do nest there. We located Grasshopper rural areas. Our biggest challenge was heat and a lot of O,laho7 Sparrows, 5ar, Sparrows, Dic,cissels, Swainson9s ma red dirt= Haw,s, Roadrunners, Cliff Swallows, Yellow7billed Cuc,7 oos, quite a few Painted Bun%ngs, Horned 5ar,s, and We located the RusualsE in our areas, but we also found a few Blue Grosbea,s. surprises and had a lot of laughs. Birds can be pre.y funny, but the humans who watch them provide quite a bit of entertain7 In cIntosh County, the Indigo Bun%ngs outnumbered ment as well. We were in King8sher County on an extremely the Painted Bun%ngs. We came across a pair of Blac, windy day S one of those days where we could trac, the rapid Vultures perched on a u%lity pole near an abandoned advancement of the cold front due to the cloud of roiling dirt house. Had we been prone to trespass and wade across the plains. A Scissortail nest was located when the male through weeds taller than us that were undoubtedly bird with a resplendent RscissortailE landed on the nest facing saturated with chiggers, I9ll bet we could have found north in a gale force south wind. It appeared he was having is7 their nest, but we se.led for the pair in this case.
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