There was an entire flock of Robins in my yard and neighborhood, yesterday!

The recent 18" of snow cover may have encouraged them to gather together. I have seen a few around this winter but in two's, not 20 at a time!

It wasn't surprising to see the English Sparrows and Juncos join in with the group. Of course, a neighborhood Flicker and some Starlings showed up.

The California Quail are not around in the neighborhood this winter. It was surprising to see them in the yard the last few winters but they are coming from a very short distance away. Still, they climbing over a number of back fences and went through yards to get here. Only a stone's throw away is a school playground but I'm not sure how comfortable they were hanging out there.

Steve

So, on a not so dire note, the former biologist at Rocky Mountain Arsenal (she retired a couple years ago but still comes in and does volunteer work with us) has asked us to do GBBC counts out there. Its kind of a "friendly competition" between us and Barr Lake State Park to see who gets the most lists each year. So if anyone wants to help us out and come by, do a drive around the tour route and make and submit a list that would be awesome. In addition, if you weren't aware, Rocky Flats NWR opened up to the public late last summer and would be neat to check out, too and we also manage a very small property in Arvada, Two Ponds NWR.

I was also thinking that if anyone was interested, we could get together and do a bird count up here at the house sometime this weekend. We have both prairie and wetland areas we could explore and its a very neat place to "hike around". I'm off Sat-Mon this weekend due to the holiday so if anyone is interested PM me here and we'll try to make it happen!

Thanks for all the great info, Zach! You're our Bird Expert around here! I always wondered what happened at Rocky Flats with all the uproar there was about it on the news last year! Nice to know it's open and a possible place to "go for a walk" sometime!

I'd take you up on your offer to count birds together over the weekend, but, the weather is supposed to be "deteriorating" for the next several days--and I'm a wimp! And in addition to that--believe it or not, I'm "looking forward to" the "bad weather!" Today with sun and 58º I had all of 8 house finches and one lone chickadee at my TWELVE feeders! When the weather is nice they seem to always desert me! But with colder weather, and possible snow, coming up, I'm expecting to see a lot more birds, and a much wider variety of birds by Monday--so I'd rather stay here to count, where I can be snugly inside of my window rather than out freezing my tootsies off on a walk--tho seeing birds I don't see here almost made it tempting! If the weather had been expected to be warm like today the whole time I think I would have taken you up on it since I probably wouldn't have seen many here!

Do you remember when, before you hightailed it out of Denver, I was trying to identify a "new" bird I had seen here at home, and you suggested it might be a bushtit!? Well, that's what it was, and I LOVE it when they come to eat the suet! I now call them the Pincushion Birds, 'cause when they come it's in big "herds," and they're all on the suet feeders at the same time, sometimes up to 14 or 15 on a single feeder. There are so many of them that you can't see the suet basket at all anymore, and with all their tails sticking out it looks like a pincushion with all the pins sticking out of it! I hope a bunch of them show up during the count! Like most of the other birds, they tend to show up when it's colder and not so nice out!

I'm delighted to hear your information that prairie chickens are being reintroduced to SW Colorado! I have a bit of information that nobody may be interested in--but I'm gonna tell ya anyway! The "chicken dance" that American Indians do at powwows is based on the prairie chicken "courting" dance! When I first heard of the Chicken Dance I immediately thought of very ordinary white chickens in a coop somewhere laying eggs and went: What!?? Then when I found out it was based on PRAIRIE chickens I watched more and thought it was very cool! This is way OT, but if anybody around here is ever interested in seeing the "Indian version" of a prairie chicken dance, the Denver March powwow is F March 22 thru SU March 24 at the Colosseum!

Digit! I've only seen a couple robins around here so far this year, but one year I had FOURTEEN of them show up at my bird bath, all at the same time! It's was "elbow to elbow" all the way around the edge of the bath--altho I think that might more accurately be "wing to wing!" And when they showed up it just happened to be during the GBBC, in the middle of February! In Illinois, when I was a kid!, the robins always went away over winter--ALL the way away! It would always be fun to watch for the "first robin" to show up in spring! I admit I'm a little surprised to hear you have them so far north over winter, but here in Denver, too, there are robins year-round now! I don't know HOW they manage to keep warm when we get the REALLY cold nites!

Skybird

Thats very kind of you Skybird, but, I'm really no expert haha.

As far as Rocky Flats goes, we (the USFWS) was sued several times by groups who claimed that not enough was done to clean up the site or not enough testing was done to determine whether it was safe and that by constructing trails, the disturbance to the soil posed a health risk (we didn't actually disturb any soil to construct trails, almost all of them are just old two-track roads that have been around for years). None of these suites held up in court so late last summer it was officially open. I do have to admit it does make me a little bit sad. It was really cool working out there and having no one else around. As Aldo Leopold once wrote "Solitude, the one natural resource still undowered of alphabets, is so far recognized as valuable only by ornithologists and cranes."

Nevertheless, it is a very cool place. It is suspected that the largest remaining tract of xeric tallgrass prairie, a unique landscape that is only found tucked up against the Colorado Foothills and perhaps historically in Wyoming, is on the refuge. The plant life there is absolutely stunning. Everything from big bluestem to small nipple cactus to elks ears (monument plant/green gentian). Definately worth it to go out there in May when the blueflag iris are blooming in the drainages and the Indian paintbrush are exploding on the uplands. It would make a really cool "field trip" if anyone was interested in going "botanizing" with me.

No worries Skybird, you can consider it an open invitation. Any time you'd like to come up, we'd be happy to have you! Bird diversity isn't terribly high right now out here either. The really impressive thing is the 10,000 mallards that could be sitting on the slough at any one time. Spring would be better to see more birds not to mention better weather!

My feeders are out if commission for the time being. I need to move them further from the house since we started seeing evidence of mice around them. Plus I think if I move them "out back" somewhere it will reduce the number of house sparrows that use them and gobble up the seeds (I don't care to subsidize invasive species).

I'm so glad you discovered it was a bushtit! Aren't those guys wonderful? I have always liked them! You're absolutely right they do love to crowd those suet feeders! I don't think we'll be seeing those this far east, butmom gets them at her feeders in Littleton.

I love that story behind the chicken dance! All species of grouse I think are amazing and I would love to see them in person someday. We had in one of our management plans for RMA to reintroduce greater prairie chickens and sharptail grouse, but unfortunately that idea was scrapped.

We had a huge flock of robins here about two weeks ago. We have a lot of eastern red cedar planted as wind breaks and they love the berries.

Hey Zach,

If you want to lose the House Rats when you start feeding again, don't feed ANY millet! I only feed black oil sunflower and safflower, and every now and then a House Sparrow will show up--briefly--and eat a few sunflower seeds, but they really don't seem to be very interested in them, and when they do show up they usually hang onto the suet feeders for a little bit rather than going for the seed. I don't know if they like safflower or not because I feed that in a couple "clingers only" feeders, and the House Sparrows have an extremely difficult time trying to hang onto those long enough to get anything!

I still had a bag of "mixed seed"--which is 90% millet!--when I switched to just sunflower/safflower, and after about six months, when virtually all the House Rats had disappeared I decided to try to use up some of the millet so I mixed just a little bit of it in with the sunflower and within 24 hours I had bunches of them showing up again--and there was VERY little millet mixed in! I stopped with the millet and lost almost all the House Rats again. Now I'm using up what's left of the "mixed seed" by taking it along with me when I'm trippin' and feeding it to the critters--the four-footed kind!

Something else you might want to consider is this! If you hang feeders over grass--or anything you WANT to grow--it's gonna die, so what I did was to dig out some of the sod and I made a "pad" under where my feeders are with concrete stepping stones--I used the rectangular ones, but any size/shape would work. I have two sturdy wrought iron posts with four hangers on each and where they're pounded into the ground there's a "gap" just wide enough for the posts and that's the only place that's not "concrete." (To hang more than just 8 feeders, I put three 6' garden stakes across the two posts/hanger arms and I put individual chain "links" over the stakes and use S-hooks wherever I want to hang something!) The concrete extends out far enough that feeders I hang anywhere have concrete under them, so whenever chaff and uneaten seed starts to build up I just sweep it all up--and it goes on the compost pile! It's much easier than trying to clean the mess up off of the grass--tho some does get on the grass around the edges and for that I just rake it onto the concrete before I sweep up the mess! (In summer I use a bagger on my lawn mower so the "mess" gets vacuumed up each time I mow in summer!) And keeping it all cleaned up also helps with "rodent control!"

If you get into using just the sunflower and safflower, Barb can give you some good info on where to get it as cheap as possible! We (actually she buys it for me--and delivers it--and, yeah, I DO pay for it!) get both in 40/50 lb. bags, and the most recent place she found the sunflower--40 lb.--is only, I think, $14 a bag--or close to that--and it's "better"--less chaff and debris in it--than the stuff we had been using before, and paying more for! The safflower is pretty expensive and that's why I put it in the "clingers only" feeders, so even if the "big birds," blackbirds, jays, doves, do show up they can't get to any that hasn't been dropped on the ground--and I do a seriously good job at keeping the blackbirds chased away anyway since they show up in huge packs and tend to scare off most of the small birds that I want! Another good thing about safflower is that squirrels don't like it! That's a very Good Thing!

Besides those two seeds I also feed thistle--which squirrels also don't eat, and suet, and I have recently put "small" pieces of old nuts (that I don't want to eat anymore!) in one of the clingers only feeders and the chickadees have taken a real liking to them! It's fun to see a chickadee grab a piece and sit on the top of the feeders setup, holding the nut down with it's feet and eating it one little bite at a time!

When that whole Rocky Flats "thing" was on the news I was always sitting here thinking that it looked to me like people who didn't really have a clue what they were talking about were--talking too much! Having said that, I don't know that I'd want to live on the "down wind" side of it, but for somebody that's just walking the trails out there, I can't imagine it hasn't been "cleaned up enough" to not do any serious harm to anybody by now! I suspect more people are dying from radon in their homes than from Rocky Flats left overs! If you start glowing from having worked out there let me know and I'll stay away!!! But I won't be going out there in May--that's one of my trippin' months! Between "getting ready" and actually going, pretty much the whole month is filled up! I get it with the wildflowers, but I'll be seeing my own Indian paintbrush and more out in the hills where I'll be! Maybe in June Barb and I could make a trip over there to meet you sometime!

As far as Aldo Leopold is concerned, SOLITUDE is exactly what I get when I'm out trippin'! I do my best to find cabins that are as isolated at possible, and that's why I gravitate toward Parks like Natural Bridges, where there are few people to interrupt my enjoyment! When I hike Sulphur Creek at Capitol Reef (another Park with few people) I take about 7 hours to do it, and except for this last year I haven't seen another human being on the whole hike! It's wonderful! One time I hiked to the top of something called Aztec Butte in Canyonlands/Island, and I went past a sign that said: danger, keep out--I had been there before when there was no sign!--and I found a place to sit on the side of the mesa by one of the Anasazi granaries and just looked for a full half hour! Absolute Solitude! I'm delighted to be in the company of "ornithologists and cranes!"

Bushtits are very definitely "this far east," near 128th & Colorado Blvd! I haven't had the whole pack show up for over a week, but there were just a few of them here just a few days ago. I'm really hoping the whole batch shows up during the count! And I have a yellow flicker around here that was here three days ago--and I'm hoping he shows up during the count too!

It's almost midnite! Gotta go for tonite!

Happy counting,

Skybird

When we were living at mom's house out in Jefferson county, I would feed white proso millet. I think I have counted about 6 house sparrows over there since she started feeding birds in 2012. The native sparrows love the proso millet and we would have song sparrows, white crowned sparrows, towhees, gobs of juncos, and even a harris sparrow one time all of them devouring that seed. When I moved to Phoenix the first thing I did was hang an oriole feeder from the mesquite tree that hung over the wall around my yard. I didn't have an actual hummingbird feeder at the time but had brought the oriole one with me from Denver. The hummers didn't mind and I had some wonderful Anna's HB's come to visit almost immediately. The pair of Gila woodpeckers that lived nearby also absolutely loved it. A few months later I came home from work one day and the entire thing was completely fillef with "candied" bees! They had made their way into the sugary water but couldn't get out and had drowned! I really wasn't interested in attracting bees (honeybees I personally consider an invasive species, and it is also assumed that all feral honeybees in southern Arizona are the Africanized version). So, I went out and bought an actual hummingbird feeder, which has smaller openings, and packed away the oriole one. The woodpeckers were mad at me for a bit but were assuaged by the suet (NO MELT recipe of course!) I put up for them.

In addition to the bees that ruined my chances of ever attracting hooded and Scott's orioles, the neighborhood I was in had hoards of collared pigeons and house sparrows. So when I first started feeding birds other than the nectar sipping kind, I knew that the millet was a no-no. I decided to go with just a nyjer/thistle feeder and got house finches and the seed that dropped on the ground was enjoyed by the overwintering white crowned sparrows. Eventually I decided to try my luck and put out a feeder of black sunflower seeds. As I had expected, the collared pigeons showed up in droves, but I also had Inca doves so that was pretty neat. However, contrary to your observations Skybird, it didn't take long for the house sparrows to find the sunflower seed either and soon I had scores of them gobbling it up, too. At some point I decided that in an effort to mitigate the pigeon problem (I counted close to 80 in my tiny yard one day) that I would only infrequently fill the sunflower seed feeder.

When we found ourselves in Platteville last fall I knew we had house sparrows. So, when I dug out my bird feeders, the first thing I put up was the big nyjer feeder I had in Phoenix. It attracts tons of American goldfinches (I have counted close to 50 at any given time). But then I was noticing the big flocks of white crowned and tree sparrows so I decided that I was going to have to take the "bad with the good" if I was going to feed birds and just accept that house sparrows are just an unfortunate fact of life in this game. Sure enough the house sparrows showed up the second I put out the black sunflower seeds.

So far the blackbirds, of which we have hundreds thanks to extensive cattail stands found along the slough and the ponds, have stayed away from the feeders, though they perchin the tree they were hanging from. I have yet to see a single squirrel. The biggest problem is the mice. Despite our barn cat Claudia's best efforts, they are certainly around and we found evidence of them stashing seeds from the feeders. I REALLY do not want mice in the house our under the hoods of our cars to chew up the wires. I would much rather have flying house rats than actual rats. As for mess clean up, the constant wind that comes "sweeping down the plains" takes care of that and we don't have any lawn around the house anyhow.

But regardless, due to the rodent issue, the feeders got moved out in a field about 100 yards from the house today. Hopefully the birds find them soon. I am also hoping some of the guys who don't come up close to the house, like meadow larks and horned larks, might stop by with them way out there. I'll have to see if they eat seeds...

No glowing on my part, at least yet. I suspect that the carcinogens caused by the ever growing number of cars, fracking, and all the other gross stuff that is associated with the exponential development that is going on around here is far worse for a person's health than going for a hike out at Rocky Flats. I think a June field trip with you guys out there would be a tremendous idea! I know I am kind of a flake when it comes to this stuff, but I really would like to try to make it happen!

Solitude is a thing that is growing ever harder to find. Even out here we have constant traffic on the road in front of the house. People going between Denver and Greeley and all the God forsaken fracking traffic. I remember as a kid, even Brighton was like heading out to the middle of nowhere. Loveland, Greeley, and Ft. Collins felt as distant as the far side of the moon. Now Cheyenne is almost part of the Front Range metro area. Every time I see another corn field around here with a piece of heavy equipment parked in it my heart sinks. More and more I regret not taking the jobs I was offered a few years ago at wildlife refuges in northwestern Nebraska...

I actually tend to avoid National Parks because they are just so over crowded it ruins the whole expierince for me. To me, the greatest treasure isn't unique geology, history, or wildlife. Its being away from people. Organ Pipe was spectacular in that respect. I could drive the entire western loop of the monument and, except for the road and a few abandoned ranches, not even see evidence of other human beings. As you have found with Capitol Reef and Natural Bridges, in a lot of places the desert seems to be one landscape that is yet to be completely innundated by mankind. Even many of the local and state parks around Phoenix, which is the fifth largest city in the country and has three times as many people as Denver, I could spend all day and count on less than both hands the number of people I had to share the space with.

Heres hoping your bushtits and yellow flicker showed up today, or will soon! I didn't get a count in since by the time we were done with errands the weather turn a turn for the nasty. If it holds out a little bit for us tomorrow though, I'm definitely going to try!

I recently switched to safflower seed. The squirrels are actually leaving the feeders alone now. Well, they tore off all the little rubber covers on the perches probably out of spite. But they haven't tried to get to the safflower seed for eating. The other birds seem to be fine with it. It's kind of messy so I'm not sure how I'm going to cope with that yet. But I'm happy with the squirrels not eating from the feeders.

I used to like to put out suet for the flickers and I did have a couple of downy woodpeckers. But the squirrels just decimate it. They can go through an entire suet cake in about 5 minutes with nothing left for the intended birds.

I did put out some walnuts that I didn't eat and the squirrels got most of them. But the chickadees managed to grab a few and I did enjoy watching them hold them at their feet and break them apart to eat.

The blue jays get whole shell peanuts. I keep them in a jar inside and wait until I hear them come ask for them which is hard to miss as they are quite loud and insistent! Then I put out just two or three peanuts on the deck railing for the number of jays that are there waiting. They fly down and take them and return for more and we start all over again. I try not to let the squirrels get any of the peanuts. Occasionally the squirrels beat the jay but that's pretty rare. The jays are very fast!

Do you have a squirrel baffle, Mama? they really do help. Then its only a matter of preventing infiltration from above which can be accomplished by putting you feeder in an area further away from or trimming near-by trees. Hey, did you know that both blue jays and the fox squirrels we have in our urban and suburban areas are actually "transplants" that followed the forests that popped up along the rivers flowing across the prairie after we started controlling floods with dams? before that, most rivers on the great plains had virtually no trees, and no way for these deciduous dwelling critters to get between the eastern forests and the Rocky Mountains.

I have spent two days trying to post pictures, I had no idea that Houzz only allows four per post! Jeeze what a pain! Well, let me give this ONE LAST TRY! (I have said that each time I tried, by the way).

Here is the gila woodpecker that thought he was an oriole. Who was I to tell him otherwise?

The hummingbirds didn't seem to mind sharing with the woodpeckers. As usual, it was other hummers they seemed to have the issue with. I have always been stumped as to why the males thinking that chasing away all the ladies is a good dating strategy...

Hey! We are all familiar with the variously patterned juncos that visit our feeders throughout the winter. But did you know they have a cousin that only comes in one color variety, but has a striking difference from it's "dark eyed" brethren. Points if you guess it's name ;).

And here's another relative of one of our familiar feeder buddies from points north. I bet you can guess who's clan bridled titmice (titmouses?) belong to!

Of course, I never had either of the last two my own feeders in Phoenix. In the U.S., they are found only in the pine-oak forests of extreme SE Arizona and SW New Mexico, a place known as the Madrean Sky Islands. These Sky Islands are mountain peaks that rise 10,000 feet above the low desert and grassland and the extreme changes in altitude and precipitation make for insanely diverse ecosystems where the hot, dry deserts and thorn-scrub give way to lush forests. Its a place where species from the sub-tropical regions of Mexico and the temperate climates of the Colorado Plateau and Rocky Mountains cross paths and species such as wild turkeys and black bears mingle with jaguars and coatimundis. The Sky Islands are my absolute favorite place I have been to in all my life. (If you're ever in the mood for long distance "trippin'" Skybird, I can recommend some cool spots in the Santa Rita Mountains and Coronado National Forest, but you have to take me with you.)

I was going to add more photos, but apparently now even four is too many, since it takes so long to load them, you will just have to wait until tomorrow.