More Birds of Colorado

A real bonus of birding is that it adds new interest to familiar places. I’ve been going to Colorado for at least five years now, but I keep finding new birds I’ve never seen before. Last Friday Jen had to babysit four other kids, so I decided that would be a good time to go for a long walk.

Despite my sunburn, it might have been the best birding day I’ve had in years. I managed to find a Magpie nest, even though I never managed to get the shot of a Magpie that I was aiming for.

Magpie Nest

I suspected the magpie was more cautious than usual because of the proximity to her nest, though it may just have been because she was too busy feeding an emerging brood to stop for rest. At first I was puzzled by this shot, but when I returned two days later I realized that all the birds had left the nest. So she was feeding this one who’d already left the nest.

Magpie feeding fledgling

On Sunday, Logan and I discovered a baby Mourning Dove resting on the rail, the closest I’d ever been to one

Baby Mourning Dove

while his mommy watched from a nearby tree.

Mourning Dove

Though I’ve never gotten a picture of either a Magpie or Mourning Dove, I have seen them several times in the past. The same can’t be said for my sighting of a rather common Western Meadowlark,

Western Meadowlark

and an even rarer, at least here in the West, Yellow-Headed Blackbird.

Yellow-Headed Blackbird

Remarkably, this is only a small sample of the many birds I saw while walking the Openspace area near Tyson and Jen’s home.

3 thoughts on “More Birds of Colorado”

  1. That certainly was a good birding day, loren. These are favorite birds of mine that I don’t see unless I go to California or Eastern Washington. I’ve never seen a Yellow-Headed Blackbird, but now I will recognize one when I see one.

    These photos “feed the soul.” Thanks so much.

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