Hello, Birders. Hannah and I had a wonderful time at the 2011 CFO convention, held this past Friday-Monday, May 20th-23rd, in Grand Junction, Mesa County. Here are a few selected random highlights--in totally random sequence, just as they pop into my head:
1. The "Nikon/CFO Team ID Challenge." On Friday evening, Nathan Pieplow and Molly Malone moderated this entertaining and educational "pub style" birding quiz--with prizes for the winning table donated by Nikon Sport Optics. 2. Registration, etc. It all looked good to me. Thanks to Maggie Boswell, Roger Linfield, Brenda Linfield, Christian Nunes, and I'm sure others who welcomed convention attendees, distributed registration packets, fielded questions, and so forth. 3. Vendors. Great to see representation from several major optics companies, along with several prominent Colorado-based birding and field ornithological organizations. Thank you, vendors, for your support of CFO! 4. Award recipients. Three folks received CFO awards this year. Dave Madonna, Senior Plant Engineer at the Xcel/Valmont power plant in Boulder County, received an appreciation award for his essential role in the annual birding extravaganza at Valmont Reservoir, Boulder County; Suzi Plooster received an appreciation award for being a key player for many decades in Boulder County's vibrant birding community; and Larry Semo received the Ronald A. Ryder Award for Distinguished Service to Colorado Field Ornithology. Larry was unable to be present for the presentation of his award, but he nonetheless received a prolonged standing ovation for his impressive and diverse contributions to field ornithology in Colorado. 5. Saturday afternoon presentations. This is another Pieplow initiative. (See #1, above.) Here's an online enumeration of all the fascinating presentations: http://tinyurl.com/3ww699r. 6. People! In his remarks on Saturday evening, CFO President Jim Beatty put it well: Initially, Jim told us, we were going to hold our banquet in one of the hotel's meeting rooms; then, because of higher-than-expected registration, we were moved into the half-ballroom; then, we were moved into the 3/4-ballroom; eventually, it became obvious to the hotel staff that the CFO banquet would require the full-on, 100% capacity grand ballroom. It's fantastic to see so many birders at our CFO conventions. In recent years, the CFO convention has emerged as one of the annual highlights on the North American birding landscape. Many folks deserve accolades for making recent CFO conventions so successful, but I believe that Jim Beatty deserves special recognition in this regard. For the past 12 months, Jim was hard at work, almost daily it seemed, on all aspects of planning for what was surely one of our finest conventions yet. 7. Young birders. Outstanding to see good representation from great young birders, including John Taber, Claire Madonna, Elise Madonna, Ali Iyoob, Matt Daw, Hannah Floyd, Joel Such, Marcel Such, and probably others I'm forgetting. Of special note is that teen birders Ali and Matt hauled it all the way from North Carolina. I love this post to Ali's Facebook wall, posted at 12:25 a.m. on Sunday morning: BOREAL OWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 8. Jeff Gordon's keynote presentation. It was a cliffhanger. For real. And brilliantly delivered, as is always the case with Jeff's public lectures. One participant--somebody in the "nonbirding companion" category--commented that this was the best presentation she'd ever attended. Ever! 9. The weather. Oh, come on! Ya gotta admit, It's cool to live in a state where heavy snow IN LATE MAY brings traffic to a near-standstill on one of our major transcontinental highways. 10. The birds! I'm saving the best for last, of course. As of Saturday evening (only the half-way point of the convention, in terms of field trips), the convention checklist was pretty much filled up with expected West Slope bird species. And there were some nifty write-ins, among them: --Black-chinned Sparrows at Devil's Kitchen, Colorado National Monument, Mesa County. Seen by many; missed by many. Well, that's often how it is with great birds. --Worm-eating Warbler, found by Dave "Fear No Weevil" Leatherman along the Colorado River Trail near Palisade, Mesa County. --Lark Buntings and Bobolinks, species of decided note in west-central Colorado. --Rufous-collared Sparrow! Still singing sweetly from antennas and chimneys and such in Georgetown, Clear Creek County. --Indigo Bunting and Tennessee Warbler in Utah. Oh, yes--we snuck into Utah. Those cross-border raids are a tradition for CFO conventions! And many others, I'm sure. A huge thank-you to field trip coordinator Coen Dexter and all the field trip leaders, who did an excellent job of getting folks to great destinations with great birds. We'll soon be posting to COBirds additional CFO convention wrap-up, but I figured I'd supply these quick highlights right up front here. By all means, if you have convention highlights of your own, we'd love to hear from you. Thanks again to all of you--very nearly 200 of you!--who made the 2011 CFO Convention a marvelous experience. One last thing. Not a member of CFO? Bummed that you missed all the good birding and great camaraderie this past weekend? Well, don't just sit there! Do something about it! Join Colorado Field Ornithologists today! Here: http://www.cfo-link.org/contact/index.php#join ------------------------------- Ted Floyd Editor, Birding Blog: http://tinyurl.com/4n6qswt Twitter: http://tinyurl.com/2ejzlzv Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/2wkvwxs ------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cobirds?hl=en.
