My Christmas Mountains Oasis is twice as old as the habitat I'm working on in Alpine (nearly 16 years versus 8 years). At CMO I started with nothing, whereas, in Alpine there were 2 ponds and a neat row of Desert Pines already there. While I'm sure some of the recent nesting activity at CMO is a result of maturing habitat, in Alpine I'm not sure if bird numbers are up because of maturing vegetation, or because of the drought. Probably a little of both.
Seen today were Painted Buntings, an Indigo Bunting, a late migrating White-crowned Sparrow (oriantha), MacGillivray's Warbler, Wilson's Warbler, Yellow-rumped (Audubon's) Warbler, Yellow-breasted Chat, plus more migrants and all the regular yard birds. Thirty-one species in all. The only hummingbirds are about 15 Black-chinneds. And this female Common Yellowthroat was more cooperative than the male I saw a few days ago.
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