Denver Field Ornithologists

Our mission is to promote interest in the study and preservation of birds and their habitats. Members are encouraged (through meeting presentations and field trips) to learn about birds in the field, noting species and numbers, while familiarizing themselves with their songs and calls, as well as habits and habitats.

Our club was formed in 1935. The Lark Bunting, our monthly newsletter has been in existence since 1965, publishes the scheduled field trips for the upcoming months (about a hundred each year), and lists the sightings from previous months, along with notices and announcements of interest to our readers. Membership and donations to our club provide the funding source for our services. Membership is open to anyone interested in birds of the Denver area in particular, and the birds of Colorado in general.

Membership ranges from $20 to $30 per year depending on whether you choose to have the Lark Bunting emailed to you or sent via first class mail. Student (age 18 or younger) membership is $5 per year. A membership application form is in the Lark Bunting or it can be downloaded from this site.

We hold regular monthly meetings on the 4th Monday of the month, except May, June, July and December, at the Museum of Nature and Science in the Ricketson Auditorium. Our presentations feature leading birders in the area, who cover a variety of timely and wide-ranging topics tailored to all levels of expertise. Dates and topics of the meetings are on the Colorado Rare Bird Alert 303.659.8750, this web site and in the Lark Bunting newsletter. Park on the north side of museum and walk around to the west door between 7 and 7:30pm. If late, (although lateness creates a problem for our hosts) enter through security/volunteer door.

Birding 2.0 -- Using Technology to Become a Better Birder...

With Ted Floyd, Bill Schmoker, and Nathan Pieplow

Monday, March 22, 2010

We are sure almost every DFO birder has experimented with technological aids of one type or another; from websites to GPS to IPods singing out bird calls in the field. Ted, Bill, and Nathan will amaze you with their INTERACTIVE presentation. They will showcase a wide variety of the latest technological resources available in the market today for the tech-savvy birder.

They will demonstrate such things as:
     • Birding software
     • Bird and birding websites
     • Handheld electronic gadgets
     • Innovative electronic bird finding guides such as the Colorado County Birding website
     • Bird identification and vocalization sites and aids: Macaulay, Xeno-Canto, Raven Lite
     • eBird, COBIRDS
     • Citizen science
     • Navigation (GoogleMaps) and weather info.
     • and more...

Ted Floyd is the editor of Birding, the flagship publication of the American Birding Association. He is the author of numerous articles and two recent books, including The Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America (HarperCollins). Ted is a frequent speaker at bird festivals and other birding events, and he is an instructor with the ABA’s Institute for Field Ornithology. His last two appearances before the DFO audience were “The Most Excellent Birds in the World” (Oct. 2007), and “Birding at Night: The Ultimate Frontier” (March 2009) about the mid to late summer molt migration of Colorado chipping sparrows.

Bill Schmoker’s greatest professional accomplishment is being a dedicated middle school science teacher in Longmont where he lives with this wife and son. He is the past president of Colorado Field Ornithologists and in his spare time he is an accomplished nature photographer whose work has appeared in magazines, field guides, newspapers, interpretive signage, advertisements, corporate logos, websites, and other venues. He is also a busy blogger, columnist, instructor, speaker, and tour leader for ABA and other organizations, and he is a Nikon Birding ProStaffer. Visit Bill at http://schmoker.org or http://brdpics.blogspot.com.

Nathan Pieplow teaches writing at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and is the distinguished editor of CFO’s quarterly journal Colorado Birds. Nathan has been a key figure in the development and implementation of the online Colorado County Birding website, an innovative electronic birdfinding guide, and of the Colorado Birding Trail, with its unique emphasis on creating partnerships between private ranchers and the state's birding community. Nathan is a contributing author to Birding and an instructor with the ABA’s Institute for Field Ornithology. He is also an active natural-sounds recordist and he blogs at Earbirding.com.

All persons in attendance on March 22nd will receive a FREE copy of Let's Go Birding! a new beginner's guide by Ted Floyd and Bill Schmoker, published by the American Birding Association. Thanks to the ABA for this special offer. Whether you love your computer, Blackberry, and IPod or hate them, join us for an entertaining and informative presentation by three of Colorado’s top birders and leaders in the use of technology in the pursuit of our feathered friends.

A Refresher Course on Calls and Songs of Avian Spring Migrants

With Nathan Pieplow -- Monday, April 26, 2010

What ARE bird songs and how do they differ from bird calls? The Savannah Sparrow on the left, photo by Carol Blackard, is certainly trying to communicate!

According to Frank B. Gill (1990) bird’s vocalizations allow them to “mediate social interactions, particularly over long distances, at night, and in dense cover.” Clicks and clacks, chips, cheeps, buzzes, squawks, trills and peeps enable DFO members to tune in to the daily activities of our avian neighbors. It is often said that the best birders have the best trained ears.

Some bird species have only one identifiable song. Some of the mimics such as the northern mockingbird have hundreds of songs. Some birds such as the wood thrush can control both sides of their trachea independently and thus can sing two songs at the same time. Similar abilities have been discovered in grebes, bitterns, ducks, sandpipers, and various other songbirds. In October of 2007 Ted Floyd told us about a small, cryptically colored Asian species in which the male and female sing one song simultaneously with each contributing only 50% of the notes.

In 1956 P. Marler studied the vocalizations of Europe’s common chaffinch and identified the following: songs and subsongs, along with flight, social, injury, aggression, alarm, and courtship calls. In 1954 L. de Kiriline listened to a red-eyed vireo which sang 22,197 songs in a ten hour period. (Does one question the sanity of the ornithologist?)

For months DFO members have been listening to the conversations of Colorado’s winter residents from a skein of Canada geese passing overhead, to the neighborhood flock of bushtits in the leafless lilac bushes, to the black-capped chickadees and dark-eyed juncos at the feeder. In recent days however, a few tentative spring songs have been heard in the urban forest. A few mourning doves have been around all winter, but now some secret signal from nature seems to have awakened their biological clocks causing them to announce the early beginnings of spring with their soft, distinctive cooing calls.

Have you grown weary of the winter vocalizations of our feathered friends? Do you long for the distant call of migrating sandhill cranes, for Roxborough ovenbirds calling from oak thickets, for the melodious notes of a Red Rocks Park canyon wren echoing off the red sandstone formations, or the magic sound of a MacGillivray's warbler emanating from a creekside willow carr?

If so, then you are primed to spend an evening with Nathan who will discuss and play recordings of the songs of common spring migrants, providing a timely refresher course on the sounds of spring in Colorado, with an emphasis on telling bird sounds apart by using patterns. The presentation should give members some new ideas about what to focus on when listening to birds. Nathan will also touch on some questions of high-frequency hearing loss and how it affects birders.

Nathan Pieplow is an avid bird sound recordist, the esteemed editor of the quarterly journal Colorado Birds, and an author of the Colorado Birding Trail. His blog which is found at Earbirding.com, is dedicated to recording, identifying, and interpreting bird sounds. He teaches writing and rhetoric at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

The Denver Field Ornithologists monthly meetings are held in Ricketson Auditorium at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science in City Park. These meetings are free and open to the public and occur on the 4th Monday of each month August through April (except December). Park on the north side of the museum and walk around and enter through the museum's west door. Plan to arrive by 7:15pm; DOORS OPEN BY 7:00 AND ARE LOCKED AT 7:30pm. If late, you can enter through the security/volunteer door, but this creates problems for our hosts.

DFO Board is asking members to participate in a survey developed in order to better understand the needs of the membership. The survey was in the February issue of the Lark Bunting, and is available for download here. Download Survey

NOTE: Please call the Colorado Rare Bird Alert for DFO meeting announcements or cancellations. Colorado Rare Bird Alert – 303-659-8750

DFO FRS Two-Way Radio Standard is channel 11, code 22

Downloads and Resources