There I relaxed, lounging on my lawn chair sipping on a nice pour of well-aged bourbon (with an umbrella of course) while watching the beach themed screensaver playing out on monitors. White sunscreen paste on my nose, sandals at the ready and cheap sunglasses on. Life was good even though outside the Midwestern winter was raging in the wind aided teens. That’s before a call came in on the Intrigued bat signal line. What could possibly be so urgent on Thanksgiving night!! A quick check of the number confirmed it wasn’t our legal department so at least that fear was suppressed. Turns out it was our Quality Assurance department head and he was none too pleased. “What did I do now?” Through the sputtering and agitated speak I discerned something about being down a post from our monthly quota and putting our 10+ year record in jeopardy. He had seen my comment in the previous post about our staff taking some time off to be with the family over the holiday. I could see the floor through my tumbler and decided I was in no shape to remedy the situation. That’s when Brad said he would take care of it and already had a story in the queue. Someone just significantly padded his upcoming performance review ha. Soooo, I’m going to put another coating of sunscreen on and maybe resolve this empty tumbler tragedy while Brad takes the controls to bring you an adventure from Colorado.
Take it away Brad (and thanks for the assist!)…
Jan and I were winding down an April trip to Colorado when we found a free half-day on our hands. We quickly consulted a map of the birding spots around north-central Colorado. One of them had a dubious location (included a camp ground near an interstate), but since it was near where we were headed, Jan and I decided to give it a try.
When Jan and I arrived at the gate of St. Vrain State Park, there was a small guard shack. The guard asked what we were doing there and we said we were trying to find some birds. He gave us a doubting look and told us the entrance fee for camping. I said we weren’t camping, just looking for some birds. He could clearly see into the car and knew that we had no camping gear and didn’t intend to stay. After a brief pause, I think he took pity on us and gave us a paltry amount as an entry fee (which may have been the actual fee).
At that point I had no idea where to go in the campground. The guard suggested we may want to try the lake. Great! Where’s the lake? We, OK I, stumbled around on the roads a bit until we found a parking lot near the lake.
Jan and I followed the well-maintained crushed gravel path three-fourths of the way around the lake (counterclockwise from the parking lot). Even though we were two hundred yards from I-25, we could easily hear the traffic whizzing by. Jan saw a flash flying into a green tree on a low branch. Cameras at the ready we slowly crept up on our target.
Hit the jump to find out more about this rather dapper looking feathered find.
My first thought was, “Is that a Black Phoebe?” Doesn’t it look like it’s wearing a black tuxedo, at least from the back? Since the lighting was better than other photos we had of the Phoebe, we kept shooting. We were able to approach to within about 30 feet without ruffling many feathers.
At home I was able to identify this bird as an Eastern Kingbird (Tyrannus tyrannus), a +1 for us. Tyrannus of course, meaning “monarch or ruler or king”. A very literal translation makes this the King King bird, right?
I think maybe the shutter noise from the dual court jesters with cameras was getting its attention.
Playing coy it turned its back on us. Careful observation let me see (in the digital darkroom) a bit of the orange crest, or crown (all of six feathers) between some bed head feathers. We did catch this bird early morning and probably disturbed its rest.
Go ahead, zoom in on the photo and you will see it.
Or maybe it was really watching something across the small lake behind us. There were quite a few glampers in the campground. A few seconds later it took flight. I thought, “Great! Only a few photos in the tin and it’s gone. This will NOT look good on my Intrigued performance review later.”
Not to worry. After a brief swirl around the edge of the lake, our Kingbird landed on a dead twig near the water. While we didn’t see any insects in its bill, the Kingbird must have taken its sustenance “on the wing”. Eastern Kingbirds hang around the edge of bodies of water, still or moving. They mainly eat insects mid-air, or fruit when they can find it. Kingbirds have also been known to catch and eat small frogs. The process for getting a frog down is not pretty, so sensitive readers may want to skip ahead to the next paragraph. OK, here’s the gory part. After catching a small frog, a Kingbird will repeatedly beat the frog against their perch to subdue it, then swallow the frog whole. Sounds similar to what Jan and I witnessed at Harris Neck Preserve in Georgia (here) between an Anhinga and a fish.
OK, it’s safe resume read again, welcome back.
Seeing we were no threat; the Kingbird left its lakeside perch to land in the same tree but on a different twig.
This photo gave us a great view of the tiny hook on the end of its bill. After getting a good view of that gaff (as in hook not as in mistake), I’d worry if I were a small frog.
We didn’t know at the time, but we caught this specimen on the western edge of its territory in central Colorado. The territory map shows a gap right where some of the highest mountains are, because it also frequents the extreme western edge of Colorado.
A male and female negotiate the nest site. The female does most of the work building the nest with the male watching closely. Some think this is to protect the female from predators, including other suitors. A pair will raise 2-5 eggs once per year. Incubation takes just over two weeks, and the kids are “outta the house” in another two weeks plus a few days. The Eastern Kingbird breeds in North America then spends the other half of the year in South America.
Thank you for reading. If you want to see more Eastern Kingbird photos, please visit here.
Credits Thanks again to Jan for proofreading and editing. Thanks to Jan for most of the photos in this article.
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