Feeder Birds appendage for Louisville CO

[John Tumasonis]

I saw the information for backyard birds earlier today.  Not to sound redundant, but after living in Louisville for 25 years, I built up quite the backyard bird list.  None as good as what others reported, but some strange stuff nonetheless.  I was about 2 blocks from Fireside Elementary School near Dahlia St.   The backyard had one unique advantage that other neighbors did not:   an eight foot high jungle of cedar bushes, with brush and thickets that covered 3/4 of the backyard.   Memorable notes:

-  Red eyed vireo - two years in a row, singing in spring

-  a pair of bushtits that nested in the thicket for two years - the surprise was that they were carrying unshelled sunflower bits back to the nest.  (I never thought that they would feed the juveniles seeds, but apparently they do.  

-  A raven and crow perched side by side;  once seen like that, you wonder how you could ever mix the two species up. 

-  An American kestrel, prying open the head of a house sparrow it caught. 

-  Numerous Cooper's hawk attacks - one of them learned how to drive doves and robins into the sliding glass door, and pick them up after they had severe concussions.  

-   Singing spotted towhees every spring. 

-   Singing and foraging green-tailed towhees, about every other spring. 

-  Singing hermit thrushes, about every other spring, usually on wet cold spring days

-  Myrtle warblers, Audubon's warblers, yellow warblers, orange crowned warblers, yellow warblers, almost every spring. 

- Red tailed hawks, great horned owls, and if you count fly-overs - bald eagles. 

-  Western tanagers, bullocks' orioles, black headed grosbeaks, and one time a singing male rose-breasted grosbeak. 

-  A male lazuli bunting gathering millet from the bird feeder.

-  American tree sparrows, white crowned sparrows, and a clay colored sparrow

-  All three jays:  Steller's, Blue, and Scrub (remember this is suburban Louisville)

-  Mountain chickadees, and red-breasted nuthatches in cold winters. 

-  And dozens of other species - I'm too lazy to look through the whole database. 

-  And one of the most memorable - a male mallard.   Not unusual you might think, but the whole yard was sealed off by high fences, with tall bushes and trees.  He popped in one morning, took a look at me, and flew to the neighbors yard.  

All that along with the raccoons, squirrels, skunk, mice, rats, cottontails, and the crowning glory - a red fox family taking up residence in the cedar thicket - one morning the entire backyard had rubber balls, tennis balls, a child's sock, a tennis shoe, doggie-squeeze toys, an entire wing from a mourning dove, and other paraphernalia that the adult foxes had dragged into the backyard overnight for the kits to play with.  They must have canvassed the entire neighborhood overnight to do this!  

Happy backyard birding! 

John T (Tumasonis) Broomfield CO

"I'm not a real birder.  I only pretend to be one on COBirds."