As intermittent rain and warmer temperatures have fueled the rapid advance of a tardy spring, two of our summer avian residents have appeared on our Littleton, Colorado, farm over the last few days.
First to arrive were a couple of house wrens, delivering their buzzy calls from the shrub rows that line our property. Having spent the winter along the Gulf Coast, in Mexico or in the Desert Southwest, these small, active songbirds usually appear by mid April but have clearly been delayed by the cold, snowy weather this spring. The two that now occupy the farm are likely males, which migrate a bit earlier than their potential mates in order to search for suitable nest sites.
The second of our new summer residents is a broad-tailed hummingbird that just arrived today, zooming overhead and making vertical loops that will soon highlight his mating displays; as with the house wrens, males return from their winter range (in Central America) before the females. Following the prolonged chill of March and April, I am pleased to welcome these fair weather birds back on the farm.
