Corvid City, letter to the editor

In response to Stephen Capra’s letter.

It started in the 80’s with pigeons. I don’t remember a single pigeon until Reagan was elected. Pigeons on the Mall. Pigeons above the Elks club.

I live in a place which faces Aspen mountain and used to be the “top of the hill” right at the 8000’ line where nothing was ever going to be built. It’s where the meadow and forest reclaimed it’s rightful place back from slides of slag miners left behind.  “Freddy” the first owner of #106 planted a pine tree at her back door. In 48 years I watched that tree grow- kissing my balcony and climbing past the roof. Hadid’s development came with the Pigeons and smashed the old boat tow shack leaving the 8000’  rule in the dust. Up went 15,000 sq foot homes between me and the mountain- unoccupied homes with pigeon spike rows  on perfectly oiled log pediments. I still had the tree between me and “dream homes”.   I watched generations of Steller’s Jays, Nuthatches, Chickadees, Juncos and Hummingbirds build their nests and raise families in that tree. Once there were 7 baby Steller’s in a row on my balcony rail. Over time the songbirds left.   By the time Obama was in office there was only a magpie nest in the  tree. By the time Trump was in office the tree had been cut down and my view of Aspens, Lodgepole pine, Blue Spruce and Queen Anne’s lace was replaced with an homage to Joni Mitchell….. a parking lot.

Now ravens sit in the trees  on either side of main street waiting for roadkill. Magpies chatter at West End diving after what your dog leaves behind.  Sparrows flock to Peaches and Paradise feasting on flakes of pastry. Gone are the pine siskins, the finches, the towhees… even the Camp Robbers stay far above us at the Sundeck or Maroon Bells. The last time I saw a Stellers Jay it was half way up Buckskin Pass.

People ask me what’s changed in 49 years. We used to be a town of humans living in a forest full of birdsong where bears stayed in the berry patches and watched us from a distance. Foxes were rarely seen and coyotes never. Now we are a town were the scavengers come to dine.

The Christmas Count

It's something I've never done before, the Audubon Christmas Bird Count, and yesterday was a perfect day for walking through squeaky snow and looking for birds.

We started at ACES in Aspen. There were the expected visitors:

Canadian Geese

Mallards

and some unexpected visitors

a Merganser

and, most impressive, a loon

We split up into teams of 4 and started driving down valley. Our group stopped at different wetlands along the way. We saw a lot of the usual suspects, Robins, Doves, Ravens, Crows, Magpies, Red-Tailed Hawks, Cedar Waxwings, Townsend's Solitaires, Chickadees ; and the unexpected including a Kingfisher and a Snipe, yes, a Snipe. 22 different species in all. 

One of my favorites is the the Water Ouzel aka "dipper". These little guys just sit by the water's edge and dive in for dinner. They communicate through eye blinking when the sound of the river is too loud for singing.

Here's a little video of the dipper dipping on the Roaring Fork river

We all got a Christmas present for our last sighting. There were two birds swooping over the river (one of them stooped like a falcon but we never got a close enough look for a clear ID) and as we were watching in come these two Golden Eagles. They weren't our first eagles of the day, but they were posing rather pretty on that rock outcropping.

I tried to get the video going on the camera but I wasn't fast enough this is all I got.

It was still a nice way to end the day.

Starlings and Shakespeare

"The king forbade my tongue to speak of Mortimer. But I will find him when he is asleep, and in his ear I’ll holler ‘Mortimer!’ Nay I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak nothing but Mortimer, and give it to him to keep his anger still in motion." Henry IV

Which is why we have the European Starling in the United States. In 1890 Eugene Scheifflin imported and released 60 starlings in Central Park on the theory that every bird species mentioned in a Shakespeare play should find a perch in the New World.

Here they flock with Brewer's Blackbirds. They love my roof. Lucky me. Henry IV isn't my favorite play and the Starling isn't my favorite bird. The native species of Chickadees, Nuthatches, Nutcrackers, and Finches are nearer and dearer to my heart. We even had a Western Tanager stop by one year. The Mourning Doves are escapees from a local shooting range. Starlings are something we've seen increase recently along with Pigeons. This is probably directly due to the filling in of irrigation ditches and replacement by wheel sprinkler systems. Magpies, Ravens and Starlings have thrived in the less diverse ecosystem and the smaller birds are having trouble keeping up.