Birds that depend on unique ecosystems in Rocky Mountain National Park don’t have long to adapt.
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“One brown-capped rosy finch,” Scott Rashid called to me through the branches of a juniper as I fumbled with my winter gloves and pressed record on my phone to dictate the number. It was my job as a bird count novice to document each sighting.
Rashid is a self-educated bird researcher who organizes the yearly Christmas Bird Count in Estes Park. The local count, which covers ground in the country’s highest national park, Rocky Mountain, has been a yearly volunteer-run endeavor for over 70 years.
On the first Saturday morning of 2020, camo-clad and fur hat donning Rashid discussed details of the day to a group of over 20 volunteers huddled in the entryway of Estes Park Visitor Center. When the volunteers set off to their respective routes, I walked with Rashid to his Jeep, anxious to see what my first birding experience would be like tagging along with an expert. Standing aside, awaiting his invitation to get in, I watched as he cleared a space, tossing books aside and grabbing the paw of a limp carcass, flinging it into the trunk.
“Rabbits are good for my bird boxes because their skin just falls apart,” he said of the foraged roadkill he’d collected that morning.
