county listing--a few changes

[Ted Floyd]

Hello, everybody.

Well, if you've ever birded at Prewitt, you know the "county line problem": Do you count that Great Crested Flycatcher for your Washington County list or your Logan County list? Same thing with a Mew Gull at Chatfield: Jefferson County or Douglas County? And the most notorious of all: Pueblo vs. El Paso for vagrants at Chico Basin Ranch.

Colorado Field Ornithologists has decided that all birds at Prewitt count for Washington County lists, that all Chatfield birds count for Douglas County lists, and that all Chico birds count for El Paso lists.

A related challenge involves areas actually in one county but often counted by birders in another county. This mainly affects Boulder County. Union Reservoir ("technically" in Weld County), northern Jefferson County Open Space, both sides of U.S. 36 from the Larimer County line to and including Estes Park and Lake Estes, and all of Gilpin and Broomfield Counties now count for Boulder County lists.

One of the members of CFO's County Committee put it this way, "We needed more parity in county listing. Things were getting out of hand in Pueblo with all those ridiculous rarities and good birders down there; it's really unfair when you think about it. So this balances the playing field, and restores Boulder County to its rightful top spot. Boulder is tops in everything else in Colorado, so it should have the highest county list too."

With these changes, the Boulder County list soars to 448, and Pueblo's is reduced to 399.

To see the updated county checklists, see:

http://tinyurl.com/county-list-changes

And for the full report with new top county listers, see:

http://tinyurl.com/top-county-listers

Ted Floyd (just got 42 Boulder County armchair lifers, woohoo!)

Lafayette, Boulder County 

[snowy.owlets]

Hi all, 

To be fair, you should be able to count anything west of Cameron Pass in Moffat county if that's where your list is... :) Welcome to April already. 

Mark Miller 

Longmont, CO 

Sent via the Samsung Galaxy S® 5 ACTIVE™, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone

[Joe Roller]

Kudos to the Committee!

It's about time the CFO County Committee caught up with what birders have actually been doing all these years.

For example, when I go to Weld County, the Chalk Bluffs in southern Wyoming are SO close,

that I routinely add birds there to my Weld County list.

As for Yuma County, growth in that list has been stymied by the rude draining of Bonny Reservoir! The nerve of them!

But just downstream lie the very wet Hale Ponds. After I bird that area, it's so easy to meander downstream a bit,

say for 5 or 10 miles, adding Yuma County birds until I am SURE that I have entered our friendly neighbor the east,

the Sunflower State.

As for Archuleta County, I have seen a lot of birds on Navajo Reservoir. It's all one lake, right, so who 

notices that it dips a few yards into northern New Mexico?

Now some birders take this idea too far, counting birds seen at Lake McConaughy in nearby Nebraska

for their Sedgwick County list. I consider that cheating, but "hey" it's their list.

Joe Roller, Denver

Buffing up my Colorado County bird lists at every legitimate opportunity.

I love early April. It's the one chance all year to tell the Truth!

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[Ted Floyd]

Thanks for bringing this up, Joe. I was going to mention the very issue you touch on, but I neglected to do so. We can now count for our Colorado lists all birds seen in and around Cheyenne, Wyoming (Wyoming Hereford Ranch, both Hereford reservoirs, Lions Park, etc.); and the CFO County Committee is thinking of extending this coverage north along I-25 to Casper, west along I-80 to Laramie, and east along I-80 to the Nebraska Line--and, then, what the heck, out to Lake McConaughy, just as you say.

As to which Colorado county this all applies to, it is felt by the CFO County Committee that these birds are best claimed on Boulder County lists.

The committee is also thinking of ceding Chico Basin Ranch and Pueblo Reservoir to Kansas . . .

Thanks, --Ted Floyd, Boulder County

[Karl Stecher Jr.]

Now then, speaking for Kansas...since what is now (since 1876) Colorado was designated K. T. (Kansas Territory), can Kansas listers count all birds seen in Colorado on their Kansas state lists?

 

Karl Stecher

Centennial

 

 

 

---

From: "Ted Floyd" <tedfl...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Friday, April 01, 2016 1:29 PM
To: "Colorado Birds" <cob...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: tedfl...@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: [cobirds] county listing--a few changes

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/b07695db-300f-4b75-8988-8d49b092015d%40googlegroups.com.