Backyard Birding at the M…M… Apartments

Backyard birding and living at an apartment on the third floor may not seem to add up to most people.  In my case, however, I was able to reconcile the two seemingly disparate concepts since I considered the entire M…M… community MY backyard, park and pond included.

In this post, I would like to share images of the amazing feathered friends and 'accidental' creatures I was lucky to have captured this spring at the place we once called home.

The heavy traffic of house finches outside our window gave this secret away.  Unfortunately, they were frightened by the maintenance work being carried out :-(

Rusty Blackbirds procreating.  A quick and what looked like a violent act of the couple's perpetuation of their genes.

Canada Goose with future pooping machines :-)  I'm sure they'll be as efficient as their parents.

Belted Kingfisher swooping down for a meal.

Highly successful at catching fish and crustaceans.

Black-crowned Night-Heron.  Not many people have ever seen one since the species is mostly active at night as the name suggests.  He was hanging out with a Painted Turtle at that.  We were lucky!

Pete and I spotted a yellow bird with an orange head when we went out for his exercise walk one time.  We thought it was a Western Tanager.  I didn't have my camera with me then so we went back to the same place a few days later in the hopes of getting a glimpse of the golden bird again.  No luck but something leapt to the pond and scared the bejesus out of me.  The feeling might've been mutual. 

I checked the Herpetofaunal Atlas of Colorado but I couldn't figure out what this guy was.   Desperate for an answer, I contacted a herpetologist at the Division of Wildlife (I'm such a geek, aren't I?)

Ms. T, the amphibian and reptile expert, said it's a non-native bullfrog and it's pretty common in the metro areas.