I keep a neighborhood list rather than yard list. We’re at 6,000 feet in the Boulder foothills half way between Boulder and Lyons. My neighborhood includes the 1.7 miles from US 36 to our house. I always have feeders but way fewer in the summer in recent years since the bears have been so pesty. My list is 155 species. Notable birds: Northern Goshawk,Dusky Grouse, Band-tailed Pigeon, Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Northern Pygmy-Owl, Northern Saw-whet Owl,Common Poorwill,Lewis’s Woodpecker, Williamson’s Sapsucker, Red-naped Sapsucker, Cassin’s Kingbird, Pinyon Jay, Eastern Towhee, Red Fox Sparrow, all three Rosy Finch, Pine Grosbeak, Common Redpoll.
The most shocking find was the Cuckoo. I was walking and spotted it in one of the few deciduous trees among the ponderosa pines. I tried to photograph it with my phone but the camera focused on the leaves instead of the bird. I’m surprised I only get four hummingbird species. I’ve seen three others in Boulder County but not at my house.
We’ve been here 25 years and I’ve been birding the neighborhood every day we’ve been home. Binoculars always handy.
David Waltman
Boulder
--On 03/11/2024 10:40 AM MDT Thomas Heinrich <teheinr...@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, includeand variety of species, are really impressive (e.g. David Suddjian's, Gary Lefko's).I’mYellow 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 HeinrichMy answers to the questions above:15 yearsDedicated to obsessive152 speciesWood Thrush, Yellow-throated Warbler, N Cardinal, Common Redpoll, Bohemian WaxwingWatching 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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