Well..January is now gone and February is upon us.  January was a good month for birding.  I finished the month with 53 birds, well above the 40 species I set as my goal for each month.  I also added two birds to my Life List, bringing me from 296 to 298 and leaving me two birds away from my goal of seeing my 300th Life Bird this year.  Both Life Birds on the month were  excellent birds, Long-tailed Duck and Barrow's Goldeneye, the first a very rare bird to be seen in Colorado, and the later a bird that is becoming more commonly seen in winter, though still an uncommon bird.  Brown Creeper, being my first bird of the month and year, was awesome.  It is one of my favorite birds and I get way excited every time I see one.  My short Standley Lake birding walk was fun,  as even though I didn't see a mega-load of species, I did see some very awesome birds and had a wonderful time.

I am looking forward to this months birding.  Being a leap year, we have an extra day to bird ! My dad and I are leading a bird walk at Two Ponds NWR in Arvada, CO on February 18th, from 7:30-8:30 in the morning.  I am super excited about this! I've also added another bird to the year list already this month, Prairie Falcon, bring me to 54 on the year and leaving me with 144 to my goal.  Thanks for everyone who has checked out my site, my YouTube channel and Facebook page, and for everyone who is loyally following me! 

Happy Birding to y'all in the month of February!
-Daniel- aka Bird Spy
 
Had a most awesome day of birding today! My dad(Nathan) and I went out chasing two rare birds that had recently been seen in the state.  Our targets were Snowy Owl near Barr Lake and Long-tailed Duck(Oldsquaw) at Duck Lake in Denver's City Park.
We started out chasing the Snowy Owl.  After about an hour of driving through the fields, we failed to see it and decided to head down to City Park.  While we were looking for the owl, we did see Ferrugious Hawk, Northern Harrier and Bald Eagle.
At City Park we found the Long-tailed Duck pretty easily.  This is a VERY rare bird for Colorado.  We were able to watch it for our entire time birding the lake.  It was mingling with Common Goldeneye, Bufflehead, Ring-necked Duck and a female Barrow's Goldeneye.  The Long-tailed Duck was my 297th Life Bird and the Barrow's Goldeneye was my 298th.  I was very excited to see my first Bufflehead of the year, as the Bufflehead is my second all time favorite bird.  We also saw Cackling Goose, Gadwall, Redhead, Northern Shoveler, Cooper's Hawk, American Wigeon and Hooded Merganser at Duck Lake.  We had a blast watching the Mergansers. We saw a female and a male. At one point, the female caught a crayfish, and the male harassed her for the better part of 5 minutes trying to steal the prize away from her.  After much chasing around the lake, the female finally succeeded in devouring the crayfish, after which, the male contented himself to sit on a log.  A few short seconds later, an American Coot chased the merganser off the log.  All in all, it was a most outstanding day of birding, one that I will remember for a long time.