I went birding this morning.

Adventure morning

A friend and I decided to check out a free guided bird walk at Chatfield State Park- a park 20 minutes outside of Denver with a large reservoir. We rolled up around 8AM to find a large group of people with binoculars, scopes, and funny hats. Many of them at least 20 years our senior. The group met for a quick chat, then drove from site to site in a large caravan to see different birds.

Bird spotting

Had I not been with the group, I probably would have seen some Canada geese and magpies and that’s about it. Turns out I am not great at even seeing birds without binoculars, let alone identifying them. Luckily many people in the group called out birds as they saw them and let us take a peek in their fancy scopes.

I tried (and failed) to resist the urge to laugh at this particular sighting considering I saw bald eagles much closer several times a day in Juneau. I did mention it to a group-mate but tried not to rain on their parade. Everyone seemed pretty excited about them.

Bird identifying

I have an app that helps identify birds (Merlin ID), but I really didn’t need it with all of the birders around. They all had books or just knew what we were looking at. It was nice to be able to compare the birds I was seeing to some pictures. Some of my favorites today were:

• Downy woodpecker, peckin away at a pine tree
• Common Goldeneye (I named him Pierce)
• Redhead
• Kingfisher
• American white pelican
• Gadwall
• Eared grebe
• Pied billed grebe

Birding gear

With new hobbies come new gear opportunities. I peeped some good ideas on neighbors in the group:

• Adventure hat (safari hat)
• Binocular chest straps, to prevent back of neck discomfort
• Birding book, to identify birds
• Wildlife scope on tripod, to see far away birds
• High powered binoculars
• Giant camera lens

No pictures

I didn’t want to get distracted lugging around my camera, and didn’t think I was likely to get shots worth anything without hauling a tripod along, so I don’t have any photos of the birds we saw. Now that I know it a pretty slow pace, I might bring a camera next time.

Other things

It was also just a really nice day to be outside.

In addition to plants, I was also delighted to see this STELLAR whiteboard art in the registration office. Standing ovation.

Next

I would definitely do it again in a day with nice weather. The group appears to meet monthly on Saturday. Adventure approved.