Although it happened more than 40 years ago, Ann Bonnell can pinpoint the moment she decided it would be intriguing to pursue birding as a hobby. She had been hiking in Pence Park near Evergreen when she saw a Blue Grosbeak, an eye-catching bird with electric blue coloring and a silver beak.
“That is a beautiful bird,” Bonnell, 83, said this week. “And I thought, ‘Man, it might be interesting to learn more about birds.’ ”
That was in the late 1970s. Since then, she has learned so much about birds that the local Audubon Society often refers callers to her when people are trying to identify a bird.
“With our stressful lives, birding is a wonderful thing to do,” said Bonnell, who lives in Littleton. “I enjoy watching their behavior and hearing their songs. And it forces me to get outside. I always tell people birding is about the cheapest hobby you can have. You don’t even really need a pair of binoculars, or you can get a cheap pair. I started out with a $25 pair of binoculars and used those for years. I didn’t buy an expensive pair until about three years ago.”
Here is Bonnell’s list of the 10 most interesting birds along the Front Range that are common enough to spot. (For reference, Bonnell recommends the “Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America” by Kenn Kaufman, the “Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America” by David Sibley, and the website All About Birds, created by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.)
American Goldfinch: Some birds change colors with the seasons, and the American Goldfinch is one of them. Right now the males are brilliant yellow with black on top of the head, while the females are olive-colored. “The American Goldfinch is just beautiful,” Bonnell said. “They’re a neat little bird. They’ll just pose for you. They’ll get on a branch and look around like, ‘See how beautiful I am?’ If you have feeders, they like thistle seeds, and they’ll take shelled sunflower seeds.”
Red-tailed Hawk: This is one of the large birds of prey that soars overhead looking for meals, and is one of the most common hawks in North America. It’s light-colored underneath, and the shoulders of the wings are dark. It also has a dash-and-comma” pattern on the leading edge of the wings (called that because they are in the shape of punctuation marks). “They’re starting to nest in the city,” Bonnell said. “They can find bunny rabbits and rodents. Alleys have garbage and rodents, so they can make a good living in the city.”
Cooper’s Hawk: This hawk is a gunmetal color with a flat top to its head, and it’s light-colored underneath. Like the Red-tailed Hawk, it has moved into the city, and it has become the nemesis of the little birds in your yard because it will eat them. “When you see birds in your yard, if they’re eating something, they’ll take a couple bites and they look all around, because they’re watching for Cooper’s Hawks,” Bonnell said. “He’ll come and snap them up in his talons, pick the feathers off and eat the whole thing. My birds are very vigilant. They don’t even take a bite until they look around.” Cooper’s Hawks also will eat rodents and small snakes.
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Spotted Towhee: This guy is kind of dark brown, almost black on the back with white spots on its wings. Underneath it’s a shade of orange, and it’s about the size of a robin. “That’s a really neat little bird,” Bonnell said. “The male is darker than the female, but they are colored similarly. It’s a ground feeder. You very seldom would see it up in a tree. It skulks around, so a lot of people miss them. They hide under your bushes.”
Great Horned Owl: You might hear it calling at night, Bonnell said, mimicking the sound as “Hoo, hoo-hoo. Hoo, hoo-hoo.” Seeing them is another matter. They like to perch on branches next to the trunk of trees, so they blend in with the trunk. “It’s really hard because they are like ventriloquists,” Bonnell said. “It’s hard to figure out where that sound is coming from. You just have to look where a branch comes out from the trunk. You don’t get a real silhouette. All you’ll see is eyes.” They feed on rabbits and mice, mostly in the dark or late in the day and early in the morning. “They have really good hearing,” Bonnell said. “They say they can hear a mouse rustling in leaves from a couple hundred feet. Then they’ll just pounce on a bunch of leaves and come up with a mouse. And they are lazy. They don’t build their own nests. They use other bird nests.” By the way, those “horns” are actually just feathers.
Northern Flicker: These are beautiful brown woodpeckers, gray on the back with long bills, speckles on the breast and the male has a red streak next to the bill. They can, however, be extremely annoying. “They love your downspout when they’re doing their courtship at this time of year,” Bonnell said. “They will sit on the edge of the gutter and bang on the metal. It will rile your whole house. During the summer, you will hear this peck-peck-peck, peck-peck-peck. They’re going along under the eves, getting spiders.”
Western Meadowlark: Often found in grassy fields, on fence posts along roads or occasionally sitting on backyard fences, the Western Meadowlark is light brown on the back, the color of dead grass, and yellow on the front with a black V on its breast and a long bill. “It has a beautiful song,” Bonnell said. “The call is kind of a chirp-chirp-chirp-chirp-chirp, tweedle-eee-lee.” The Cornell Lab of Ornithology describes it as a “buoyant, flutelike melody.”
Mourning Dove: Smaller than a pigeon, the Mourning Dove is dark gray with darker spots on its wings. Their call can sound a little sad, hence the name. In recent years an enemy has invaded, the Eurasian Collared-Dove. “It’s more the size of a pigeon,” Bonnell said. “It has a black line around the neck. They are concerned that they may run the Mourning Dove out. Mourning Doves move in pairs a lot, while the Collared-Doves are usually by themselves.” Bonnell says when she finds a pile of feathers in her yard from a Cooper’s Hawk attack and tries to deduce what bird got eaten, it’s usually the Eurasian Collared-Dove because they aren’t native to the area, so they aren’t on the lookout for Cooper’s Hawks the way native birds are.
Black-billed Magpie: These are big black and white birds, and they’re noisy. “They take little bird eggs, and sometimes they will eat a baby bird if it’s small enough,” Bonnell said. Like all crows, they are very intelligent. “They’ve done all kinds of experiments with them, where they can figure out how to get food. They’ll figure it out.” Magpies followed hunting parties of Plains Indians, feeding on leftovers from bison kills, according to the Cornell Lab, and Lewis and Clark reported that magpies entered their tents to steal food.
Bushtit: These tiny, hyperactive gray birds arrived in the Denver area several years ago. “They do not sit still,” Bonnell said. “They hop here and hop there. They get on branches and eat any kind of scale (an insect growing on the tree) or any stuff that’s eating on your branches, and aphids. They also like suet, if you have a feeder. They will come in bunches. Sometimes there will be 10 of them. They never sit still, so it’s impossible to get your binoculars on them.”
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