Tale Feathers: Summer 2026 - Birds, Dinosaurs & Seeing Nature Through a Child's Eyes (Episode 23) Transcript

My little family, my two kids, my wife, my dogs, have a tradition where we go out right before bed and we say goodnight to the world. This is a time for us to connect with our natural surroundings. And normally we're graced with beautiful swallows dipping down over the lake, We see goslings following their parents. Sometimes we hear the squawks of begging young birds. But most importantly, it's a time for us to connect together and to connect back to our surroundings. And it really puts us at peace. It's a really nice time to really fully immerse ourselves right before bed. And connect to nature. And connect to nature. 

I invite our listeners to give it a try. I promise that it will help you feel more joyful and at peace. And even just spending 15 minutes outside before it gets too dark, you'll have a better sense of where you're at connected to your neighborhood, to the people around you, to the animals, to the bird life. 

Welcome to the Voices of Open Space. I'm your host, Eva Lark. 

This is our summer edition of Tail Feathers, and I'm very excited to have our youngest guest on the podcast. 

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Can you introduce yourself? Can you tell us what your name is and how old you are? 

Five and Jasper. So Jasper, you're my oldest son. You're also probably one of the, I would say, someone that really likes to go birdwatching with me. Is that right? I know. Do we often go on hikes together? 

Yes. I would say we go looking at nature in the evenings before bed when we're saying that goodnight to the world. But we also do it on the weekends and on vacation. 

Can you remember, so one thing that we ask on the podcast is, for our guests. We asked them about their spark bird, which is the bird that got them into bird watching. Do you remember the first bird that you could recognize, that you could identify? Yes. What was it? A red-winged blackbird. Do you know what sound a red-winged blackbird makes? A creak? That's right. And I think you were only maybe two years old when you identified your first red-winged blackbird. And you used to kind of run around the trail calling for them. Do we see those on our goodnight to the world? All the time. Yeah, because we live right near a lake. And so there's often big flocks of red-winged blackbirds, right? Circling over the lake. Yeah, I've noticed they make two sounds, urchary and weed. Oh, yeah. I think that the really cool thing about birds is they make a lot of different calls. Do you think they're talking to each other? Red-winged blackbird is the very first bird that you could identify, but... Did you know that when they make bird calls, Parasaurolophus, when they hooted, they talked to each other? 

Parasaurolophus? Uh-huh. Is that a bird? No. It's like... It's like... A dinosaur that had a horn that's hollow. Yeah. And they could hoot through it. Oh, so even other birds make calls to communicate to each other. I know you see a lot of red-winged blackbirds. You can identify them. But is it your favorite bird? Not now. What's your favorite bird now? It was an osprey. I love ospreys. I think... You said you would tell a story. Oh, you want me to tell you a story about Osprey? Yeah. So when you were a baby, I mean a baby, not walking, the very first bird that I know that you saw was an Osprey. Because there was an Osprey camera. We have one here in Boulder County, an Osprey camera at the fairgrounds. But at my former work, we had one too, and there was a big nest platform with an osprey on it. And as a tiny baby, the osprey flew in the sky, yelled at us because we were close by, and then flew away. And I watched you track the bird as it flew away. And I was like, that is your very first bird, an osprey. So it's kind of cool that it's your favorite bird now. 

Do you see this bird often? 

Yes. We can see it at a lot of our reservoirs here in Boulder County, but we also see it when we're traveling, right? 

Yeah. We could see it if we're going to Maine. Or Mexico. Or Mexico, because that's the cool thing about birds. They... Migrate. That's right. They do migrate. And they can go really far distances. How do they get there? They fly. I can't imagine flying thousands of miles. We get to fly in an airplane, but we're going so fast. It doesn't take long, but for a bird, it probably takes days, right? 

Yeah, but how do they fly through days? Well, they fly, and then they stop, and they rest, and they eat, and they fly. They fly, and they stop? Where? Well, they look for other habitats. So if I'm an osprey, do you know what I eat? What? Fish. I'm a fish hawk. So you just... That's right. When they're going to Mexico, they just fly overhead and see a fish. Yeah. Often they're going to be looking for lakes, ponds, rivers, streams, things that have fish in them. Yeah, like, so if they were flying to Mexico, they wouldn't really need to stop. No, there's a lot of places to stop along the way that have food. And then when they get to the ocean, there's fish in the ocean too, right? 

Yeah. They can even catch the biggest fish in the sea. Yeah. And in Boulder County, we only have osprey here in the summer because they migrate away in the fall. 

Yeah. Do you know why they come here? Why? They come here because there's good food, and it's where they like to have their nests. Yeah, and it's also, and there's also different kinds of trees. Yep, and they like to nest in kind of tall platforms. They can make those on... Yeah, like dead, really tall trees. That's right. Bird trees. Why do you think they would want to nest way up high like that? Because... They don't want predators to climb that high. 

Exactly. They go to trees that are really steep. 

Yep. And there's no branches. 

Yeah, exactly. So that's a really cool thing about ospreys. And for people that can't get out and watch them, we're really lucky here at Boulder County because we have an osprey camera that people can watch online. 

Yeah, and also you have one at your work in Hog Island. 

Yeah, in Maine I used to work at a place also at Osprey Cam. These are really great ways for people to connect to nature even if they can't go outside. Maybe they're at work, they could click and look at the ospreys and they're young. Now, I work for Boulder County Parks and Open Space. 

Do you go to parks with me? Yes. 

What's your favorite open space park? 

Mud Lake. 

Mud Lake. I love Mud Lake too. 

What do you like about Mud Lake? Because it has the trail around it. 

Yeah, that's kind of a cool thing. Some people, when they're hiking, they like to hike in a circle. So there's a little loop at Mud Lake. 

Yeah, so you can go around and then go back to where you started. That's right. And it gives you some really good views of the mountains, the aspens, the... 

Remember when we see that bench along the way? 

Oh. And we go to it, and then we can see the view. 

Yeah. Of the lake. So, yeah, we stop on the benches along the way. 

Sometimes you like to splash around on the edge. 

Yeah, sometimes I like to hop from rock to rock. I really like to look at birds while we're there. 

Yeah. I'm always looking for birds, aren't I? 

Yeah, you're always looking for birds when we're in nature. One of the birds I really like at Mud Lake is a bird I don't get to see very many places. Like, what is it? It's called the northern goshawk. It's our biggest, bulkiest accipiter that we have in Colorado. And guess what it likes to eat? Do you know? Other birds. Actually, I didn't think you knew that. They do eat other birds. So this is a big bird that has a long tail. So how does it attack its prey? Well, it's a really good flyer. And so that long tail lets it, it's like a rudder of a boat. It lets them be agile and move side to side and catch the birds as they are flying. Yeah, so it like moves side to side behind them and then it charges for the side of it and grabs it with its talons. That's right. Assipinators like to eat birds, things like Cooper's hawks and Trap Shin hawks, but northern goshawks to me are really cool because I don't get to see them that often in the city. They're really like more mountainous, higher elevation. That's where they nest. 

Yeah. Yeah, they like to nest in like really, really tall, steep, steep trees in the middle of lakes. They are a bird that I often think if I was going to pick a bird that was like a dinosaur. It would be. It would be a northern goshawk. 

Yeah. They're related to meat-eating dinosaurs since they're carnivores. 

That's right. They're carnivores. Now, I know that you like dinosaurs. 

Uh-huh. And I like birds. Uh-huh. Is that the same thing? Yes. It is? Why do you think that? It's because they're... Both, they're both the same thing, because, let me tell you the story. - Okay. - So, a long time ago, dinosaurs roamed the Earth, and then, after a meteor, a giant meteor hit Earth, then the seas started to get rocky. And dust formed. So some dinosaurs died. But the tiny dinosaurs started eating the dinosaurs that had already died. The plant-eating dinosaurs, the meat-eating dinosaur dies because There became fewer and fewer dinosaurs. But some survived. Yeah, like the little micro ones. So the ones that survived are the... Birds! Ancestors of our birds, our modern birds, right? Yeah, the big, the kind of shapey ones, the ones that, you know those dinosaurs that are kind of big and kind of small? Yeah. They're medium. Like theropods. Yeah, they're medium, big, little, medium carnivorous. And so they turned into medium birds, like flamingos. Yeah. Yeah, I think a lot of people think of dinosaurs and they think they must be reptiles. But a lot of dinosaurs were really actually more like birds. Can you think of one that looked like a bird? Archaeopteryx. Yeah, that's actually the ancestor of our modern birds. And do they have feathers? And could they fly? Kind of. Yeah. I think a lot of people don't realize that dinosaurs have feathers because... And they're related to birds. That's right. They don't know all of that. A lot of movies and even books always kind of show a dinosaur looking like... A reptile with just scaly skin. But even ones like velociraptors have feathers. 

Yeah, but you can't see them. They're invisible feathers. Well, they weren't invisible, but we know they have feathers because on their bones they had little marks with the quills that the feather shaft would attach. And I think that that's kind of a cool thing that we've realized. 

Yeah, and also they could run really fast. So if they had like big wings, then they would be able to glide faster. 

Yeah, that's the other thing. A lot of these dinosaurs didn't fly, right? They were just more like gliding, or maybe they even used them for display. Or maybe like showing off. 

Yeah, kind of like the red-winged blackbird that we talked about earlier. 

Does it like to show off its feathers? What does it do when it wants to show off to the other red-winged blackbirds? Do you know? It shows its color to look like fire. 

Yeah, so they have these red patches on the wings. They're called epaulets, and they flare them out really big and bright red. 

Yeah, and bright orange and yellow. 

Do you think dinosaurs did that? 

Uh, I think so. 

Well, T-Rex was really fearsome. 

Yeah, T-Rexes are also a theropod. 

Yeah, T-Rexes, you know that some people think they can run full speed, but they actually don't run really fast. 

So... I could outrun one. 

You think you could outrun one? 

Are there any birds that run? 

Oh, yes. Yeah. A lot like velociraptors, like the roadrunner. 

That's right. Roadrunners run on the ground very much like probably some of our ancient... Birds. Dinosaurs, like velociraptors. 

Yeah. I think that's pretty cool. 

Do you have a favorite flying dinosaur? Which one? Quetzalcoatlus. 

Quetzalcoatlus. 

I've learned so much about dinosaurs. From me. Yeah, because I really was into birds, but I wasn't really into dinosaurs before. 

So, but you didn't know that dinosaurs are birds. 

Actually, I didn't really know that until you came along. You taught me that. I got taught from, I got taught from, like, I think I got taught from, I don't know. A book? No, from my mind. From your mind? Yeah. I think, I think. I'm. From your mind? Yeah. I think that's a really cool thing. Because I'm, I'm just really smart. Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I think you're smart. I think one of the things that I've learned is that when I go even looking at birds today with you... It's dinosaurs. It's dinosaurs. I do really appreciate knowing that. The other thing is I get to see... Yeah, when I was in there and I was a baby, you didn't really... Think dinosaurs were interesting. But you thought birds were interesting. But they're the same thing. Yeah, totally. And that's what's really cool about going birdwatching with you is because you teach me. Yeah, and we can also see. You can see dinosaurs. Living dinosaurs. Yeah, living dinosaurs. Out in nature. Yeah. Out when we go say goodnight. Yeah, except if we were there when they were... Like T-Rexes were there, then we would have been gone. Yeah. I don't think we could have survived the dinosaurs. But we can survive the birds. Yeah. We live in harmony with the birds. We even have birds that come to our yard. Yeah. Like, Baba, did you know that when you weren't here, we saw a hummingbird in our yard drinking from the feeder when you were at work? Wow. I love hummingbirds. It was kind of greenish. Uh-huh. It was kind of, it was, it looked like moss. Like a moth? No, it looked moss. It looks like moss. Oh, like moss. The green was kind of the color of moss. Yeah, it was kind of the color of dark moss. Did you know that hummingbirds also migrate? Yes. Are they? Yeah. Migrating dinosaurs. What? Yeah, I mean, that's true. And we get to see even these tiny little hummingbirds in our yard that come from thousands of miles away. Just like the ospreys, they'll go all the way back to Central America in the wintertime. So we're very lucky here in the summer that we get to see them in our yards. 

Jasper, thanks for coming on the podcast. Did you like talking about birds and dinosaurs today? 

Yes. I hope that our listeners think about taking a kid birding with them. 

Yeah. Because they'll probably learn some interesting new things. About dinosaurs and birds. About dinosaurs and birds. But also they'll get to see nature. With their kids. With their kids. And with like new fresh eyes. Yeah. 

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For our next segment, we're going to talk about a common resident species. It's called meet your neighbor, where I introduce you to probably a bird that you see regularly in your yard. And for the summer, I wanted to pick a really iconic Colorado bird. So we're going to talk about the black bill magpie. This is a striking black and white bird with beautiful iridescent flower feathers. And the cool thing about magpies is you can see them in your neighborhoods, but you can also see them in the ponderosa pines on our Parks and Open Space properties. They really like a variety of habitats, even though they are really susceptible to habitat loss and pesticides, where they accumulate those in their body as they eat lots of dead things. They eat a lot of carrion. Black-billed magpies are one of my favorite birds because I remember moving to Colorado and seeing it and thinking, what is that huge big bird and how can it be one of the most common birds I'm going to see in my life? It really, to me, is quintessential Boulder County. It's on my commute to work. Sometimes 10, 20 of them on the sides of the road, also kind of diving in front of the car to eat some roadkill. But then I also see them in my neighborhood. And I hope I get to teach you a few things about them. First of all, they're not the only magpie in North America. We have another species called the yellow-billed magpie. It's only found in California, but they used to be one species together. Black-billed magpie, yellow-billed magpie were just magpies in North America until the Ice Age. And when the Sierra Nevadas uplifted, it created this geographic border, separating it from the rest of the magpies. Thus, two species were developed over time with that separation. So here, you're only going to see black-billed magpies. If you want to see the yellow-billed, you have to go visit that one area of California where they're at. They make a variety of sounds, and they're very loud, extremely vocal, like all corvids, because magpies are related to crows, ravens, and jays. They are often the... 

Like jays, the sentinels of the forest, they tell other species that there's a predator nearby or even a person walking by. So you often will hear them even before you see them, which makes it really easy to find them because they're going to alert and make themselves known. I think something that's really cool about them, though, is that they do something that not many species of any animal that we know does, which is they hold a funeral. So when a magpie dies, it has been recorded that up to 40 or 50 magpies will surround the dead magpie. 

In a funeral but not a funeral like maybe we think more of a rowdy wake where for 15 minutes they're just screeching and making lots of noises we don't know exactly what they're saying but what we do know is that they'll do this all together surrounding the the dead magpie and then Somehow they all know at the same time to stop and silently fly away. I think that just is a really interesting behavior to witness. But if you hear a loud, raucous group of black-billed magpies, don't think it's a funeral, because it may not be that common that there are dead magpies. It could be another time that they come together to make these loud mobs. It's actually called mobbing. And it happens when they are aggressively defending their young. It could be their nest or their young that have just fledged. They will call other magpies over to help defend. They're young from potential predators. And in this mobbing behavior, they'll make lots of loud noises. They'll even swoop down, dive bomb this potential predator and harass it until it moves on. So something like a bobcat or a coyote will really get agitated by all the sound and all of this activity around it by a mob of magpies, and then it will decide to leave. It's not worth the effort to look for that baby bird that's nearby. So if you hear a black-tailed magpie and there's 10 or 15 of them and they're making a lot of noise, look for a predator. Look to see what it is that they're communicating about. It could be something that you're not seeing, like a coyote or a snake that's nearby that's maybe threatening their territory. Or if you're really fortunate, you may see this other behavior where they're holding this funeral, as we call it, for their departed magpie friends. I think something about corvids in general, corvids being these ravens, jays, crows, and is that they're really intelligent birds. They've been known to use tools and communicate, and they have these complex kind of family structures, and that makes them really interesting. So my invitation for this neighborhood bird of yours is to slow down and see what they're doing. What are they up to? Are they just eating some roadkill in your neighborhood, or are they having some complex communication with another magpie nearby? 

Well, now that we've talked about our resident common neighborhood bird, we're going to talk about our notable species that have been seen in the last few months. And it's breeding season here in Boulder County. Hot, hazy summer, but beautiful. I think some of the cool birds that are around us are not actually seen. These are probably harder to find species, like burrowing owls and those northern goshawks, or even prairie falcons. But we know that they're nesting on our open space properties. We're very fortunate that we have a raptor monitoring program where our volunteers and staff go out and they pay attention to what are happening to these species and they make sure that we're creating good buffers away from trails and even sometimes we do trail closures if we think that we are going to have some negative impact on their nesting behavior. It's a really important part of what our volunteer programs do and our staff, our wildlife staff especially, they help protect these species on our properties. Now, if you're out hiking on the trails and you're looking for these species, you should first just try to find the right habitat. And then with raptors, they often, if they're nesting on cliff sides or even on trees, you can look for whitewash, which is kind of going to be going down the cliff side or down a tree. This is basically how a bird, they don't actually have like people that, where we have solids and liquids that come out of our body, they just have this kind of uric acid white wash that comes out of their body as their waste. And if you look on the cliff sides and you see that, it's often a place that's either they're nesting or more likely it's probably a place where they're roosting. And so that's like where they're hunting during the day. But regardless, seeing that on the cliff side or seeing that under a tree or on a tree could be a good place indicator of maybe a nearby nesting raptor species. So next time you're on the trail, especially somewhere like Hall Ranch or Heil or Rabbit, and you see that whitewash on the side of the cliff, you'll know that it's a frequent spot that this bird is going to be perching. And then look nearby for kind of just a tangle of sticks and a crevice of a rock outcropping. That could be a prairie falcon nest or a golden eagle nest. 

Other notable species, I have to tell you about a recent trip that I took to Howell Valley. I went to the lichen loop recently to just restock some brochures, and I was rewarded with seeing five woodpecker species. Now, if you've been on the Lichen Loop, you know that there is a pretty intense burn scar in that area from our recent wildfires. And we don't have that tree canopy that maybe people are used to in the past. But what you will be rewarded with is the opportunity to see trees. More woodpecker species than probably anywhere else because some birds, especially these woodpeckers, only go to these, like, burnt areas because that's where their food source is going to be. And on this day, the first bird I saw as I was walking down the trail was the undulating flight of a red-headed woodpecker. Woo! And red-headed woodpeckers are striking because the whole top of their head is red, and then they have these white patches on them, so they're easy to identify. So I stopped to look at the red-headed woodpecker, and as I was looking at it, I looked over, and on the very tip-top of a nearby tree was a Lewis's woodpecker. And if you haven't seen a Lewis's woodpecker, you are missing out. You should go to the Lichen Loop. Because this is a woodpecker that looks like no other woodpecker that I know of in North America. I'll paint a little picture. They're green. They have a crimson head and a pink belly. So they're just a weird looking woodpecker. But they're striking. They're so beautiful. And as I'm looking at the Lewis's woodpecker... I see a northern flicker coming by with that white rump flashing. 

And then, as I'm walking back to the parking lot, just 20 minutes later, I hear the little tap, tap, tap of a large hairy woodpecker. Hairy woodpeckers. Red-headed woodpeckers, even Lewis's woodpeckers, they love to be in these burnt areas because there's lots of insects eating the dead wood. And so as the insects are eating, the woodpeckers are going to fly around and drill down into those dead trees and pull out these delicious meals. 

So I was walking back to the parking lot. At this point, I had seen four woodpecker species, the flicker, the hairy, the Lewis, and the redheaded. And I was standing on the bridge right there at the beginning of the liking loop. I didn't even do the whole loop. I only walked 25 minutes down this trail, and then it was very hot and the wildfire smoke. But I was like, wow, four woodpeckers, I've had a great day. So as I was heading back, I'm standing on the bridge, and one more woodpecker flies by, lands on this dead tree on the ground. And it's the iconic burnt forest species. It's called the American three-toed woodpecker. They're really only seen in these kind of burn scar areas in Boulder County. And so I'm watching it. And the cool thing about American three-toed woodpecker is their name. Most woodpeckers have two toes on the top and two toes on the bottom, and they can kind of go up and down the tree. But a three-toed woodpecker only has three toes. So it's an interesting bird, and normally one I've only seen at kind of a high elevation, like in Rocky Mountain National Park, on top of Cameron Pass. But if you want to see it here in Boulder County, I would invite you to go to Howe Valley Ranch, Lichen Loop, the Overland Trail. Anywhere that you see these dead trees, you're probably going to find a woodpecker nearby. 

Next on the horizon, as the summer wanes and our nesting species are starting to depart, we are going to start to see more migrating species come through. And I don't know if you've been to some of our local parks like Walden Ponds, but there's not a lot of pond left at Walden Ponds anymore. A lot of it is really dried up in these hot drought conditions that we've had. Without a lot of snowpack this season, we're just seeing a lot of dried up reservoirs all around. But what it is giving us the opportunity is some really prime shorebird habitat. And the shorebirds are already migrating through Boulder County right now. August is the month where you see them in number. And these species are nesting up in Canada and the northern tundra areas. And we're just a stop on their migration back south. So if you're at one of these areas and you're kind of sad because the reservoir is gone, look in the mudflats because that is a great place to see these shorebird species. So Cottonwood Marsh at Walden Ponds, Lagerman Reservoir that still have a little bit of that shoreline and muddy conditions, it'll give you a great opportunity to see some of these shorebirds. 

The other things that are coming back are our ducks. Duck species also, a lot of them are nesting up in the tundra, but they're gonna come back here in winter. So as we go into fall here in August, September, we'll see more and more duck species arrive. We'll also see the departure of our breeding species. So for those who love their hummingbirds, I would say enjoy them. We still have them for a little while. And even if you start to see the hummingbirds depart, keep your hummingbird feeders out because it's a great time to find a rare hummingbird that maybe migrated the wrong direction or is a little bit off course. And often that happens kind of in the fall when the temperatures are getting cool. There's not as many flowering sources of food, so they're going to come to your feeders. Here in Colorado, we can see a number of hummingbird species that come through in the fall. We have our resident broad-tail, but we'll get rufous hummingbirds, calliope hummingbirds. You may even see an eastern species, the ruby-throated hummingbird. Sometimes we get those in fall migration, especially if you have your hummingbird feeders out. Just make sure they're clean, keeping them out of the hot sun, and you may be rewarded with a migrating species. 

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I hope that you've enjoyed this episode of Tail Feathers. You've learned a few things about birds, dinosaurs, migration. And I invite you again to go out into nature, say goodnight to the world, connect with your local species, and I hope to see you out on the trail.

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