[cobirds] Boulder Yellow-billed Cuckoo

On my morning walk today, I had a Yellow-billed Cuckoo almost as a yard bird, about 200 yards from my house.  The bird flew low across the road in front of me and landed in a 30-foot deciduous tree.  That's a hard tree to find near my house since I live in a ponderosa pine forest at 6,000 feet in the Boulder foothills.  The bird held still in the center of the tree for about five minutes giving me long looks and a chance to hear it calling.  I studied it carefully to enable me to eliminate Black-billed (too bad).  The call was Yellow-billed.  It had a mostly yellow bill, but with black on the top of the upper mandible.  It had a small black mask.  The fun ended when the property owners drove out their driveway in two cars, flushing the bird.  Of lesser note, at almost the same spot Western Bluebirds have fledged two young apparently from one of the nest boxes that I had installed on a neighbor's property.
David Waltman
Boulder County; 1/2 way between Boulder and Lyons