The Great Boulder Caper 2024

It’s a holiday tradition for birders in the Front Range metro region – The Great Boulder Caper, held each year the day after Thanksgiving. This year we’ll be capering around Boulder County on Friday, Nov. 29. Join us for as much or as little of The Caper as you wish.

Cool birds we have a decent chance of seeing: Snow Goose, Greater White-fronted Goose, Virginia Rail, Ferruginous Hawk, Merlin, Prairie Falcon, Bushtit, Marsh Wren, Winter Wren, American Dipper, Swamp Sparrow, and White-throated Sparrow. And, almost assuredly, something nobody’s really been thinking of. That’s how it always is on The Caper.

The Caper is free and open to the public. No experience is necessary – if you need to borrow binoculars, please mention this in your RSVP. Bring your non-birding friends and companions. Consider carpooling. Bring kombucha, quinoa, orange jellies, and other Thanksgiving leftovers to share if you’d like. Bring good cheer!

Trip Leaders: Ted Floyd, Megan Jones Patterson, Elena Klaver.

Where to Meet: We’ll get underway at 7:30am MST on the south shore of McIntosh Lake in Longmont. Exact meeting place: At the intersection of Lakeshore Dr. & Lakeview Cir. Confusingly, Lakeview Cir. intersects twice with Lakeshore Dr.; we’ll be at the more westerly of the two intersections, at 40°11’24.2″N 105°09’00.0″W.

The (loose) plan for the day: From Longmont, we’ll work our way roughly southward toward Lafayette. Hard to say exactly where we’ll go, but possible stops include Golden Ponds, Little Gaynor Lake, Raptor Alley, Walden Ponds, Greenlee Wildlife Preserve, and Stearns Lake. Or, who knows, maybe we’ll do a left turn and head over to Dodd and Lagerman and Boulder Reservoir. On The Caper, you never know. We’ll bird most of the day with no set end time but options for people to disperse when they want.

Please RSVP. Contact co-leader Ted Floyd by email (“tedfloyd73” at “gmail” dot “com”) to let us know that you’re coming—and how many of you there will be.

Hope to see you all next Friday!