Page 36 - BRN April 2021

Streamside habitats like the lower Animas with its cottonwoods and sycamores can add a splash of color to our habitat in the fall.
take up homesteading in the yard and garden with a little encouragement.
Summer breeders include some of the brighter colored or conspicuous species such as tanagers, orioles, vireos, flycatchers, thrushes, phoebes, buntings, grosbeaks, and a few warblers.
barn swallows do love human eves and porches for their nests! Insecticide use is thought to be damaging these species’ survival due to a lost prey base. The human friendly, once common barn swallow is of particular concern. So yes, they may make a mess on your porch for a few weeks, but they are more than willing to pay you back with mosquito and fly control. Hummingbirds will show up if feeders or enough red, tubular flowers are present such as Texas sage, penstemons, cardinal flowers, or Texas red yucca. They often breed in this habitat although they roam happily up onto the slopes looking for a food source.
Winter brings new species down from areas where snow cover, cold temperatures, and a lack of insect activity make their northern or up-slope territories unsuitable. Robins and other thrushes, kinglets, grosbeaks, finches, bluebirds, phainopepla, waxwings, and song and chipping sparrows move in for the duration. Several of the higher elevation finches, crossbills, and evening grosbeaks, may come down into this habitat some years if the weather is particularly bad in the mountains or irruptions occur. The phainopepla is an unusual species which is often found in this habitat. It breeds on its lowland wintering grounds where it eats mistletoe and small fruit. It leaves the lowlands in the spring and summer, migrating west or upslope to higher elevations where it feeds mostly on insects. It loves nesting in mistletoe bunches.
Migrants are variable from year to year, and between spring and fall. Many warblers, flycatchers, vireos, several swallow and swift species, hummingbirds, and woodland sparrows pass through on their way south or north. They are often dependent
The molt of the Summer Tanager can convince the uninitiated that something extraordinary is happening - and the initiated will know that is true.
Several swallow species are attracted to riparian areas to breed, both for the mud they need for their nests as well as the high insect biomass the moister riparian conditions produce. And
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