Thursday 14 March 2024

[cobirds] Re: Yard list questions: How many of CO's 520 species have been seen (or heard) from a yard?

Hi all,
Getting a little carried away here, but I thought I'd write a quick update before getting some rest. (Hoping for a snow day tomorrow and a canceled rehearsal :-).

I spent several hours this evening mining for data on the CBRC pages on CFO's website (what a great resource, special thanks to Peter Gent, and others as well, certainly) and also on eBird. There's more to be found I'm sure, but another day...

The species total stands at 369, or roughly 71% of the species recorded in Colorado.

A couple of ideas occurred to me while preparing the list to be merged with Bryan's community-generated or crowd-sourced Google doc.
One is the potential desire for anonymity. I have been gathering only 3 sets of data in addition to the species: name of the lister (or property owner), city, and county. If anyone would like to remain anonymous, please let me know. I can change the entry to read: "homeowner".

I think it would be nice to include as many of us in the list (as viewers) as possible, because it really is a community effort. I'll do my best to make sure all who have contributed by submitting lists, or replied to this thread have at least several species entries.

I decided not to try to add dates for each sighting in an effort to keep it simple. 

If you have any suggestions, feel free to email me. I'll send out a list of species not yet ticked, in case that might be useful. Still trying to get around to replying to all directly, but it might be a few days yet.

Thanks again to all who have contributed!   

Sincerely,
Thomas

On Mon, Mar 11, 2024 at 10:40 AM Thomas Heinrich <teheinrich@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi all,

Every now and then one of us will share the excitement of adding a rarity or new species to a yard list, report yard list totals, or comment on local trends. And some of the lists, and variety of species, are really impressive (e.g. David Suddjian's, Gary Lefko's). 

Yellow Grosbeak, Pyrrhuloxia, Streak-backed Oriole, Long-billed Thrasher, Costa's Hummingbird, Laurence's Goldfinch, and even Anhinga come to mind as rarities that have shown up in or been observed from yards. (Perhaps the recent Brambling, too?)

As a pretty obsessive yard lister (i.e. binocs always on, camera ready when outdoors, much of the time indoors too), I often wonder about others' experience with yard-listing. 

How long have you been keeping your list?
What's your style of yard listing: casual, mainly feeder watching, moderate, dedicated, obsessed?
How many species?
Rarest, or favorite species?
Most memorable experience?
Location/habitat: urban, suburban, rural, etc?

And the big question: if we tallied up all our yard lists, how close to Colorado's 520 species could we get?

It seems likely that certain families would be less well-represented; shorebirds, waterfowl, and gulls, for example. But with neighborhoods lining bodies of water such as Boyd Lake, Lake Loveland, Marston Reservoir, Jackson Lake, and MacIntosh Lake (in Boulder), among many others, many of those species theoretically could have been counted on a yard list. Maybe some lucky person living on the shores of Boyd Lake has Long-tailed Jaeger, Slaty-backed Gull, and Garganey on their yard list!

Wishing all good health, good birding, and an exciting Spring migration!

--Thomas Heinrich


My answers to the questions above:
15 years
Dedicated to obsessive 
152 species
Wood Thrush, Yellow-throated Warbler, N Cardinal, Common Redpoll, Bohemian Waxwing
Watching spring raptor migration from the roof-top, 35 Broad-winged Hawks among 130 raptors of 10 species on one high-flow day (4/18/2020)
Interface between suburban and open space, base of foothills, el. 5600'


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