Thomas,
A great idea.
I'm a Maryland resident, but we have a vacation home just outside Estes Park, Larimer County. The house is west of downtown Estes Park surrounded by mainly ponderosa pine on the northwest-facing slope of a small "mountain" at about 7,600 feet above sea level.
I've been keeping a yard list there for 43 years, since July 1981 (around the same time my wife and I started birding). At that time the home was owned by my parents, and we would visit from Maryland in the summers. When I first started using eBird in March 2006, I uploaded all my old checklists. Until 2009, most of the eBird checklists were from July and August visits. After my father passed away we took over the home and began spending more time there in other months as well, and the number of visits, eBird checklists, and species increased. I usually do a couple of eBird checklists from the house each day that we are there. My total of eBird checklists from the house stands at 949.
I am a dedicated lister at the house.
My observations are of birds seen or heard from the house and small yard. We maintain a handful of feeders and bird baths. In good weather, most of the observations are from the deck. My yard list stands at 90, which is pretty respectable given the location and the viewshed we have. Two of my 90 species have not been accepted by eBird reviewers (Yellow-bellied Sapsucker and Pacific Wren, notwithstanding my detailed writeups that, unfortunately, lacked photos or audio support). I think it would be best, for consistency, to only count species that have been accepted by eBird, so I will claim only 88 species on my yard list.
As far as rarest species, those two unaccepted species would be the ones. Otherwise, I have been fortunate to have a good variety of flyover species, including lots of water-associated species because we aren't too far from the Big Thompson River and Lake Estes. Our favorite avian visitors are the resident Wild Turkey flock that roams neighborhoods on this side of Estes Park. It's fun to watch them scratching under our feeders like really big chickens! In recent years, a resident pair of Great Horned Owls have been heard calling and sometimes are seen roosting in trees visible from our deck. And a few years back we were lucky to have a Northern Pygmy-Owl sitting in a tree above our deck. Considering our habitat and location, I am fortunate to have seven warbler species on my yard list.
Thanks for doing this.
Jim Nelson
Bethesda, Maryland
On Monday, March 11, 2024 at 12:40:41 PM EDT, 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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