They had a squirrel with a messed up tail.

And regular squirrels with delicious nuts.

Denver was an awesome city to visit, but they have very few birds.  The most abundant bird was the Canada Goose.

I was trying to imagine them into Cackling Geese so I could have a life bird, but they’re just Canada Geese.  His neck seemed fairly short, though.  But Cackling Geese aren’t on the range map for Colorado.

One of the geese was acting as a lookout.  He perceived an invisible line that we couldn’t cross.  When you stepped slightly beyond the line, he would start honking.

There were also gulls on the lake.

And a cormorant, probably a Double Crested Cormorant.  Sadly the birding in this area is so poor that people visit the lake just to see the cormorants.

Denver also has a ton of flickers, but I’ve talked about those too recently so I’ll save those pictures for later.

By the time I got the car the light was already starting to fade.  It creates a nice soft light for the birds.  The birds in Oakland are very used to people, so I was able to get much closer to a Double-Crested Cormorant than usual.

In Utah, the picture below is the closest that I’ve gotten to the cormorants and it’s only because they were fishing underwater when I appeared around a bend.  So I scared the daylights out of them, which is why this is such an action shock.

I used to see Double-Crested Cormorants in front of the house in California, but they were always so far away that the pictures were too grainy.  You couldn’t even see how light the Double-Crested Cormorants are compared to other cormorants, such as this Pelagic Cormorant.

You can also see a big difference in the throat pouch.  The Double-Crested Cormorant has a giant throat pouch.

To this!

The double-crested cormorant is quite common where I live, which I now know thanks to my new lens.  I’ve seen brandt’s cormorants and pelagic cormorants in Monterey, CA, but I’m partial to the double-crested cormorant because of their green eyes and hooked beak.

Cormorants catch fish by diving up to 30 feet.

Although there is no mention of this in the guidebooks, the cormorants travel with pelicans while fishing.  I can prove it: