Wednesday, 13 March 2024

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

What a fun thread! I am in the heart of urban Denver and have had feeders up/been birding for only a couple of years. My yard total is just 39 species. We have a National Wildlife Federation-certified yard (just for fun) with some fruiting trees and lots of brush and piles of junk, but also very diligent squirrels and two terrier-type dogs to frustrate matters. I watch daily but distractedly. 

Most notable for me have been a close encounter with a Black-Chinned Hummingbird that hovered within a few feet for a minute or two as I ate my breakfast/birded one morning, a Sharp-Shinned Hawk in my cherry tree and on the fence just outside my window and diving into the cotoneaster frequented by a flock of house sparrows (verified by Dick Anderson, a far more veteran birder), and the white-crowned sparrows that lived in our yard or nearby last winter. 

Favorites include the Spotted Towhees that have lived in our yard the last two years and raised two young that I watched grow up at close range, ten feet outside my office window. Last summer we had Swainson's Hawks growing up in the neighborhood, which was neat to see. A Bald Eagle supposedly nests somewhere on the street behind mine, and a couple of months ago, I heard it but did not see it -- I gave up obsessively looking for it for my own sanity but still hold out hope. :) 

On Tuesday, March 12, 2024 at 4:51:44 PM UTC-6 Sarah Behunek wrote:
Yes, very fun discussion and thanks for sharing! 
Where and how long.
I have lived at 6030 feet west of Horsetooth Reservoir (south of Horsetooth Mt. Park) for 21 years. I started with one bird feeder about 10 years ago. 
That mushroomed to more feeders over the last few years. I started casually journal counting last year and now do a daily EBird count (Robins just showed up today!) 
As I am new to the count, I haven't broken down by species yet. My 40+ list includes many of the common and migratory birds found in Colorado and at my elevation with a reliable food source good water sources nearby.
Notable for me: Separately, Cooper's and Sharp Shinned Hawk in the tree outside my window.  I had a Bald Eagle chase a Raven (it had a snake in its beak) from my yard utility pole with Magpies flying along opportunistically. I had a Gullnado (most likely reservoir/landfill ring billed-gulls). And now, we have Wild Turkeys (sometimes 3, sometimes 16 routinely coming through our yard for feeder snacks this year and to ride on the "merry go round" that is my tray feeder. 
And sometimes we can year the SandHill Cranes flying over our area. 
Happy Birding. 


On Mon, Mar 11, 2024 at 10:40 AM Thomas Heinrich <tehei...@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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