More Common Raven & nestlings pics

The top photo is of one of the Common Raven parent birds that appeared to be taking turns bringing food to the nestlings. The bottom photo shows the nestlings a little more clearly.
The top photo looks good when double-clicked to enlarge it. The bottom photo (the fledglings were in a dark, shaded area so I had to "push" the photo) will show the bills (pinkish to reddish with yellow gape edges) better but is not as clear.

Please note that we were over 50 yards from the nest. I took the photos with my 12x digital camera, cropped and edited them for enlargement and enhancement.
SeEtta

Prairie canyon's trip: Common Raven nest & nestlings

The birding highlight of the prairie canyon's birding trip last Saturday was this Common Raven nest with 4 nestlings. It is a rare event to find a raven nest and a real delight to find one with visible nestlings.

In the top photo a parent bird is just landing on the cliff beside the nest, bringing food for the begging nestlings (the gaping mouth of one nestling is fairly visible). Though difficult to visualize, a parent bird is feeding one of the nestlings in the bottom pic (see the far right gaping mouth and in it is the parent's beak). Details can be better seen by double-clicking to enlarge them though the quality will not improve (too dark in the nest). I will post 2 more pics on the next post.
SeEtta

Field trip to the prairie canyons south of La Junta

On April 28 I led a field trip to the prairie canyon area south of La Junta. The eleven participants came from near Walsenburg on the south to north of Colorado Springs on the north with another two from Canon City which is 100 miles west of La Junta. We spent much of the day exploring one of the ranches that signed up on the Colorado Birding Trail. We were the first group to bird there so it was a true adventure from a birding perspective.

The ranch we birded is the Leininger Ranch which has thousands of acres of both prairie and canyonlands areas including some dinosaur tracks!. We also birded the Higbee Cemetery, the place we had lunch (yes, it is a really pleasant cemetery with picnic table under some shade trees and hundreds of blooming iris planted by locals who conscientiously keep the grounds in lovely condition). We stopped briefly at the Vogel Canyon picnic area to use their very nice vault toilet (replete with a real toilet seat and toilet paper) but didn't stay long as their was a scout encampment there.

Due to the heavy winter snows and a number of spring rains, wild flowers were in great bloom including the Sprawling Daisies (Erigeron colo-mexicanus) in this photo.
More on the trip in the following posts.
SeEtta