Front Range
Birding Blog

Beautiful blue skies made for excellent birding this past Saturday morning along the South Platte River at Hudson Gardens. A wide range of birds were seen, from a tiny Ruby-crowned Kinglet to an enormous juvenile Bald Eagle and everything in between! Our walk largely consisted of hugging the South Platte, keenly eyeing the only non-frozen…

Despite some biting wind and cold on Saturday morning, fourteen brave birders embarked out to South Platte Reservoir to look for waterfowl and other winter birds on our first monthly bird walk of 2018. We racked up a grand total of 35 species in just under three hours in the field, including two rare birds…

The weather was surprisingly mild for early December, and though we started out with our coats on it was not long before several of us were down to shirtsleeves.  November can be a good time to start seeing a wide variety of wintering geese and ducks, and while we had good luck getting three species…

It was a chilly one out on Saturday morning, but the birds were out and a pleasant time was had birding at Hudson Gardens! We observed a respectable total of 24 species (see the full list below or on eBird here), including some great wintering waterfowl and a wonderful winter surprise: a Northern Shrike.  Eight…

Harriman Lake once again delivered, as we spent a beautiful fall morning tallying 34 species (see list below). Everyone enjoyed great looks at eleven species of ducks, all of whom, except for the Shovelers are really showing their glorious breeding plumage. We saw three species of ducks from the genus Aythya, Redhead, Ringed-necked Duck, and…

Saturday gave nine of us another beautiful morning at Hudson Gardens. We started out with a nice deluge of landbirds, including a Downy Woodpecker, several Black-capped Chickadees, a couple of very cooperative Red-breasted Nuthatches, and a nice little flock of Bushtits. A real highlight was getting to see three juvenile Black-crowned Night-Herons. However, our main…

Saturday mornings at Chatfield during the summer are a bit of a mixed bag. The number of ways in which people find to entertain themselves there are astounding, and the atmosphere can be quite circus like. Almost everywhere you look on land and water you see more people, and often birds are being flushed and…

It was a slow morning at Hudson Gardens this past Saturday. Thirteen of us, while moving from one patch of shade to the next, managed to tally only 24 species. We struck out on a few species that can generally be counted on such as Cooper’s Hawk, Cliff Swallow, and Yellow Warbler, so we had…

Thirteen of us had a great Saturday morning at the Denver Botanic Gardens at Chatfield, recording 33 species (see list below). The finches were well represented and we had great looks at both American and Lesser Goldfinches. American Goldfinches are about thirty percent bigger than Lesser Goldfinches, being about half-an-inch longer and more stocky, and…

Twelve of us braved periodic rain, trail-side hail from the prior afternoon, slippery roots, and muddy creek crossings as we wended our way up the Silver Dollar Lake trail Saturday morning. Bird activity was fairly minimal, and we came away having tallied only fourteen species (see list below). Those that we got the best looks…