Backyard Birds – February 2022

From Golden, Karlin Jenkins emailed, “I am so excited that you were interested in our Varied Thrush sighting. We saw it in our yard on January 3-5. January 3rd and 4th it was in the evening. On January 5th, we had it in our yard much of the day (morning thru evening). That was the last we saw of it. It never figured out or was interested in where our bird feeders were or took interest in our bird bath. Pretty much just scavenged on the ground (granted, underneath and near one of the birdfeeders).” She sent videos, but they don’t reproduce well for this column.

Amy Law emailed from Green Mountain, “My husband Doug has been working at home on Green Mountain through the pandemic. Last week, he started telling me that he was seeing a Northern Shrike lurking around the birdfeeders outside his window. This evening, we got a picture.”

Polly Reetz, in central Denver reveled that, on Feb. 2, “We have finally seen Bushtits in our yard this winter. Despite having a suet feeder up all fall, we saw only one . Today, four showed up, although one went to the seed feeder rather than the suet. I hope they will continue to visit us.”

From Parker, rehabilitator Heather Brown sent stunning photos of one of her special birds – a Harris’s Sparrow. “He has been in my backyard all week long among the House Finches and variety of juncos.” She marveled at the detail in the feathers. We haven’t heard of many this winter, though the Urban Christmas count recorded one.

On the Urban CBC Barb Masoner’s group watched 3 Western Bluebirds (1st for the count), the Bluff Lake group confirmed a continuing Golden-crowned Sparrow (4th for the count), and Dave Driscoll photographed a Lesser Goldfinch (3rd for the count) at his feeder. Ken Stuckey showed our group a Barrow’s Goldeneye, and took several stunning pictures.