Hello, everybody. What a fantastic and gloriously exhausting time we've all been having at the CFO Convention in Cortez, Montezuma County. The birds--you know, Painted Redstart--were brilliant, but, really, the grandest thing about a CFO convention is all the wonderful people. Some highlights for me:
Thursday, 5/16. The flight to Cortez, in a rattly, retrofitted Volkswagen Vanagon bus, was splendid; thanks to Christy Carello for earplugs. At the Thursday evening kickoff and barbecue, we all proudly displayed our CFO name badges, ate copiously, and marveled at Maggie Boswell's registration table acumen. Friday, 5/17. It's always great to have Nick Komar on a field trip. Somewhere north of Bauer Lake, Montezuma County, Nick spotted a coruscating Painted Redstart, and had the presence of mind, even while the rest of us were whooping and hollering, to photo-document the bird. Another highlight was a photo-documented duck with a preponderance of Mexican Duck genes. At one point during the afternoon, Robert Waters disappeared with my box of fire-roasted tomato Triscuits and the car I was riding in. In the evening, we suffered through Nathan Pieplow's demoralizing, thoroughly entertaining, and of course educational bird ID pub quiz. Saturday, 5/18. There were so many Dusky Grouse along La Plata County Round 316, we had to swat them out of the way. At point, all 20+ of us were simultaneously watching and listening to a vainglorious displaying male right along the road. When we left 30 minutes later, the bird was still hoo...hoo...hoo...'ing. And check this out: We saw an apparent pair of Pink-sided Juncos in suitable breeding habitat at 8,000+ feet; one of the birds even chased off an unwelcome Gray-headed Junco. Saturday, cont'd. The afternoon paper session, chaired by Nathan Pieplow, was superb. We're all experts now on such matters as bird monitoring in Mesa Verde National Park, Rock Wren and Canyon Wren home range ecology, electrocution hazards for raptors, and the salutary effects of cattle exclosures in BOULDER County (no, I didn't present that paper). Banquet highlights included the world's fastest bartender and John Vanderpoel's deadpan yet lively presentation about his 2011 Big Year; all of us suffered permanent retinal damage upon viewing images of the speaker in his neon red running shorts and dirty green golf shirt. Sunday, 5/19. I had no idea there were so many human beings, let alone birders, in Durango. The Durango County mafia were out in full force for a field trip to Dolores County, and they kept us in high spirits for the entirety of the long, sunny, rainy, cloudy, clear, calm, windy field trip. Dolores County is so cool. You simply expect to see nesting Black Phoebes, Peregrine Falcons, and some 80+ other species in and near the Dolores River canyon. And there's always the unexpected--like an audio-recorded adult female White-winged Crossbill. As far as I can tell, the 2013 CFO convention has gone off without a hitch. Many, many people have played a role in the success of our conventions in recent years, but one person stands out for his singular contributions to overall convention excellence: Outgoing CFO President Jim Beatty has done a thousand and one little things, along with several dozen very big things, to take our conventions to a whole new level these past few years. And, now, I gotta figure out where I'm staying tonight... Homeless but happy in Cortez, Ted Floyd tedfloy...@hotmail.com Lafayette, Boulder County, Colorado -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to cobirds+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to cobirds@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
