CFO provides travel awards for youth and students to attend scientific conferences, birding camps, training workshops, and other educational endeavors to promote the education of the next generation of bird enthusiasts, researchers, and conservationists. To learn more about the travel awards and other CFO grants, please visit the CFO website . Moira Wistera, an undergraduate at MSU Denver, was selected as the artist for the 2026 CFO Convention in Loveland, CO. Through that initial connection, Moira became a CFO member, joined the CFO convention planning committee, and successfully applied for a travel award to attend the convention.

CFO provides travel awards for youth and students to attend scientific conferences, birding camps, training workshops, and other educational endeavors to promote the education of the next generation of bird enthusiasts, researchers, and conservationists. To learn more about the travel awards and other CFO grants, please visit the CFO website . All birds photographed in this article are banded under Federal and State licenses and permits and handled by trained bird banders.

Information formerly found in Birding Hotspots is migrating to eBird.

Call for volunteers. Colorado now has 20 “vacant” Breeding Bird Survey routes that need skilled volunteer observers who can commit to adopting a route for at least three years.

Colorado Birds , CFO’s quarterly journal, welcomes Isabelle Busch to its covey of columnists. Her column, Avian Origins, will explore the evolution of modern birds in a multi-year series.

One of Colorado’s only endemic breeding birds, the Brown-capped Rosy-Finch , is under increasing stress due to a number of factors that we still don’t fully understand, including habitat loss, climate change, and the decline of alpine habitats. Very little is known about the locations and survival strategies of these birds, which migrate down from high elevations to feed on sparse food sources throughout the state during the winter. The Rosy-Finch Winter Project is a new citizen science initiative asking community members, feeders, birders, researchers, and others to help close these gaps. Researchers and conservationists can better understand the species’ winter ecology, identify threats to important feeding areas, and guarantee that these habitats are preserved by using a quick-and-easy online survey to report winter feeding locations and rosy-finch sightings.

Kirstin R. Chapman and Jennifer S. Redmond, CFO members and grantees of the CFO grant program, recently had their paper published in The Journal of Raptor Research , documenting the first known observation in Colorado of a second clutch laid by a confirmed mated pair of American Kestrels, following a successful first brood. The press release announcing this research is below:

The Anhinga discovered June 2 on a pond near Boulder Creek has quickly become a Colorado celebrity, attracting hundreds of birders and passersby in the weeks since she appeared. Local news media spread the word further, with coverage in the Denver Post and on Channel 9 News on June 12.