David Smith

David was first introduced to birds back in the 50s when his parents bought a Peterson’s guide. Later, when he was in medical school and considering a residency in radiology, David’s advisor recommended that he take up bird watching because “it will teach you to recognize the important details within the background clutter.” After medical school, David focused on his career and on raising a family. In the early 2020s David and his wife, Shanna Rendon, set up feeders and began visiting their local Audubon sanctuary. Their son, Casey, encouraged David to return to his interest in photography, and David began photographing the birds coming to his feeders. They started FeederWatching in 2003. Now David is retired and has more time to pursue his photography as well as skiing and bike riding. A golden retriever joined the family, and after getting her certified as a Therapy Dog, David began bringing her to their local library to let kids read to her through a program called Dog Ears.

FeederWatching

With binoculars and camera nearby, David and Shanna watch their birds for about an hour each morning from two chairs near their picture window while drinking coffee and tea and discussing their plans for the day. The window overlooks high desert, shale hills, and gneiss and sandstone cliffs, as well as their feeder station, which is just outside the window.

“We get a kick out of the Bushtits, but we have to be at the window at just the right time because the flock arrives, eats, and leaves in about a minute.”

Shanna is the better “spotter” says David. “With 30 years of experience in a hospital lab, most of that as a cytotechnologist (looking at specimens trying to distinguish the few malignant cells from the other 200,000 to 400,000 normal cells on a slide), she is detail oriented and can spot a small variation in color, size, or form marking an unusual bird that I might miss.” David and Shanna regard their careers “studying slides and x-rays as good training for the more relaxing pursuit of counting birds for FeederWatch,” David wrote.

Habitat

David and Shanna first started FeederWatching in a lower, marshy woodland area about two miles away from their current home. Despite the close proximity, the habitat changed drastically when they moved about two years later to their current high desert location with pinyon pines and junipers. At first they found that far fewer common feeder birds, such as sparrows, chickadees, and titmice, visited their current site than their previous site, but they now were treated to Canyon Wrens, Pinyon Jays, and Gambel’s Quail. In later years the common feeder birds began visiting their current site more frequently.

“Our feeder station is bounded at the back by a stack wall of boulders, and this little guy was exploring all the cavities.”

Their current yard borders the Colorado National Monument on the western slope of the Rockies, near Utah, where the mountains meet the desert at about 5000 feet. An old buffalo fence marks the boundary to the monument—a remnant from the days when buffalo roamed this portion of the park. David described the front yard as suburban, with a sidewalk and people walking by, while the back is wide open and natural.

The temperature range from summer to winter is drastic, with extremes as high as 105 degrees in summer and as low as 0 degrees in winter. They only receive about 9 inches of precipitation each year. Consequently the plant life is sparse and lacks variety, which limits the number of bird species that visit the feeders.

The birds

Other common visitors include White-crowned Sparrow, Dark-eyed Junco, House Finch, Mourning Dove, Juniper Titmouse, Pinyon Jay, Woodhouse’s Scrub Jay, Gambel’s Quail, House Sparrow, and Cooper’s Hawk with the occasional Spotted Towhee, Green-tailed Towhee, Canyon Wren, and Blue-gray Gnatcatcher.

At one point David and Shanna had three kinds of jays in a ten minute period—Steller’s Jay, Pinyon Jay, and Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jay. David was especially delighted to see the Steller’s Jay, which he used to see when he lived in the Santa Cruz Mountains in California, but this species rarely descends to the elevation of his current home. He also noticed that the Steller’s Jays he has visiting now have more white around the face and over the eyebrows than the birds he saw in California, indicating that he is now seeing a an interior form of the species, which made the sighting even more exciting.

David’s favorite feeder visitor is the Gambel’s Quail. “We are on the Quail Parkway, used daily as the Gambel’s Quail commute from an adjacent arroyo to a large grassy area on the other side of the buffalo fence,” David wrote. In the spring, the quail bring their chicks to David’s window, up to sixteen in a clutch. “In the winter, they wade through the snow and toboggan down the slope to the feeding area.”

A couple of years ago David and Shanna hosted two Orange-crowned Warblers for several months. The species had never been reported in the Grand Valley during the winter.

Feeders

David and Shanna have tube feeders filled with Black-oiled Sunflower seeds, millet, milo, and nyjer seed. They have platform feeders for cracked corn and peanuts and a suet cage for peanut butter. On the ground they spread corn and peanuts. David makes homemade suet blocks from lard, peanut butter, cornmeal, flour, and seed that he forms into blocks and puts on his platform feeders. The feeder area also includes a heated bird bath.