When I heard about the American Birding Association’s Camp Colorado I was hooked. I reached out to Roaring fork Audubon to find out about any scholarship assistant I could apply for. It turned out that Audubon was just getting ready to offer scholarships for youth birding camps and I was their first applicant. I worked hard on the application and an artwork piece to submit. I did an interview and soon after that I found out that I had been awarded the scholarship. I was very excited. It was still months away, so I had wait patiently for the day when I would go. Finally, it was time to go and the drive to Rocky Mountain National Park was beautiful. We stopped to see American White Pelicans and Violet-green Swallows. It was gorgeous! I was a bit nervous because I had never been to a camp for that long. It was easy to find the other birders when we got to the YMCA of the Rockies because they were wearing bird shirts and binoculars. We met up with the group from the airport and birded our way down to the lodge. We had an orientation talk and then dinner at the cafeteria.

The next day we woke up early, at 5:00am, to go to Wild Basin in the park. We walked along a trail until we came to a small waterfall there we saw an American Dipper. Further along we came across a Broad-tailed Hummingbird nest. We watched the female build onto the nest. A few minutes later we stopped by the river. One of our instructors had heard a bird! We all got silent and watched the trees for movement. The bird kept singing and we kept searching until we saw a flicker of movement! It was a Pacific or Winter Wren! We weren’t able to identify it because they look and sound almost exactly the same. Back at the parking lot we saw a goshawk fly over! That was an awesome first day!

The next day we headed over to Endo Valley where we hiked a little bit and saw many Audubon’s Warblers. When we got to the Alluvial Fan waterfall, we sat and did some field drawing. We got to see an American Dipper and a Western Tanager. After the session at the waterfall we got into the cars and drove further up the road and we birded from the car. Later that afternoon we shared our drawings with the group and took a photo of all the art. This afternoon we got to visit Scott Rashid’s bird banding station. We learned about bird conservation and we got to see two hummingbirds get banded!

On Tuesday. We woke up at 3:45am and drove to the Pawnee National Grasslands. We ate breakfast at the Crow Valley Campground where we saw Common Nighthawks. Then we drove to some farmland to see Mountain Plovers. We stayed there for a while. At the next stop we saw Burrowing Owls and McCown’s and Chestnut-vollard Longspurs! Later we saw so many Grasshopper Sparrows that you could just spot a small bird and know what it was! As we drove back the YMCA, we saw a Peregrine Falcon and Caspian Terns. That was a very cool day. I got four life birds on that day.

On Wednesday we went up to the Alpine. For many kids it was their first time above treeline. We went to a trail that would take us to a great spot to see White-tailed Ptarmigans. But when we got there we noticed that there were five bull elk blocking the trail. We sat down on the pull-out and drew the elk, and while we were there we got to see a ptarmigan! We sat there for 2 and a half hours! After that stop we went up the Alpine Visitor Center. We hiked up a trail to see if there were Rosy-Finches up there. We didn’t see the Rosy-Finches there. When we got back down one of our instructors said he saw Rosy-Finches across the valley! We all got to see the Brown-capped Rosy-Finches though the scope. We made a few more stops but only saw Yellow Bellied Marmots and Pikas.

Thursday was our last full day at camp. We went to Lyons to do some foothills birding. We met up with Ted Floyd and his daughter, Hannah. Ted Floyd is the editor of one of the ABA magazines. We saw Rock Wrens and Canyon Wrens. At a spot by the river in Lyons we saw a Golden Eagle and Western Tanagers. We birded around the YMCA and saw the Broad-tailed Hummingbirds. One evening we went owling.

“Be quiet,” whispered one if the instructors, “I hear the owl.” He kept calling to the owl and suddenly yelled, ”Ahh! It hit me!’’ We all had to do our best not to laugh! We saw the Saw-whet Owl up in the tree and that was the most memorable part of the trip.

I am so grateful for this opportunity. We learned how to draw from Rafael Galvez from Peru; he is an amazing bird artist and is very inspiring. I learned about jobs in conservation and how to work to conserve anything in the natural world. Everyone in my group came away feeling empowered to do their best to conserve the birds. We were inspired to keep learning and keep being curious about our bird friends. Thank you to Roaring Fork Audubon for making this incredible experience possible for me.

by Elsie Weiss