September 3, 2009

No excuses for the lack of blogs so here I go turning over a new leaf with a commitment to more frequent posts . It has actually been a great year of activities so far at Front Range Birding and I will retrace some of our steps and share them here over the next few weeks so please bear with me as we cover such outings as the Raptor Road Trips of January, the 5th annual FRBC Open House in May, our July Alpine Wildflower Walk on Shrine Ridge above Vail Pass, and the ongoing Walk the Wetlands treks with the Audubon Society of Greater Denver. We just joined Twitter so you can follow our future excursion plans as well. Be sure to sign up with us on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/frontrangebird. You will be up to speed on such items as our Book signing event with author, illustrator, and photographer Scott Rashid and his new book Small Mountain Owls on September 12 from 3 to 5 PM at the store and our upcoming digiscoping workshop on October 10 at the Carson Nature Center with Swarovski’s Clay Taylor and Nikon's Bill Schmoker. Anyway I will start with our most recent adventure in August in Chatfield State Park. The first Sunday of each month we “Walk the Wetlands” of the South Platte River in Chatfield State Park just southwest of Denver, Colorado. This recent walk was productive as usual with the added bonus of a great view of nesting Broadtail Hummingbirds being. Here are several pictures along with video. The picture and video wss digiscoped with a Leica C-Lux camera and a Swarovski HD 20x60 Spotting Scope at a distance of 50 feet. On an earlier walk in Chatfield I digiscoped this Red Tail Hawk chick in the nest with the same equipment from about 1000 yards.