Trip Leaders: Carol McCasland & Courtney Rella
Participant Limit: 8 Teen Naturalists. A waitlist will be available if the trip fills.
There is no admission charge to the Denver Zoo for participating teens. The Flamingo Meet-n-Greet & Bird Propagation Center tours is limited to Teen Naturalists and BCAS Trip Leaders.
We will visit Denver Zoo’s Ambassador flock of Chilean and American Flamingos with a behind the scenes opportunity to be in personal contact with these very friendly and lovable birds. Some have been known to even try to sit in your lap! The Animal Care Specialists will give us information on where these birds would live in the wild, what their habitats are like and how we can help conserve them.
Flamingos at the Denver Zoo. Photo by Courtney Rella
We will then proceed to another behind the scenes visit. The Bird Propagation Center where birds that are critically endangered in the wild are being bred. We may see Palm Cockatoos, Spangled Cotinga, Kea, and others. The Propagation Center is not open to the public and it is with gratitude that the Denver Zoo Conservation Alliance allows us to visit this special facility. After, Carol McCasland, a docent at the zoo with over 15 years experience, will provide a docent-led tour to other exhibits. Hopefully we will see the Zoo’s young African Lions that were born in August 2025, as well as the Zoo’s critically endangered orangutans and western lowland gorillas.
Parents and siblings are welcome to visit the Zoo as paying guests. They will not be able to join in the Flamingo and Bird Propagation activities due to limited space. They are welcome to join in the following docent tour.
Registration Required: To register or for any questions, contact Dave Sutherland, dsutherland4747@gmail.com (720) 626 1797
Learn more about Boulder County Audubon’s Teen Naturalist program or send questions to Dave Sutherland, dsutherland4747@gmail.com or (720) 626-1797.
Who Can Participate?: Outings are open to unaccompanied students in sixth grade and up, as well as younger students accompanied by parents. New participants are welcome at any time.
Transportation: Participants must provide their own transportation to teen naturalist trips. A participant list will be shared if participants want to coordinate carpooling among themselves. If you don’t want your contact information shared with other participants, please include this when you register.
Trip Leader Bios
Carol McCasland has been a ‘casual’ birder since childhood when she saw an Eastern Meadowlark singing on her school playground as a 3rd grader. That ‘casual’ attitude continued into adulthood when she moved to El Paso, TX and eventually Saudi Arabia. There her interest grew — Greater Roadrunners, parakeets eating dates in the front yard, the migrating Hoopoe,.... Her interest morphed into a life-long quest to find birds wherever she went: from her office in Houston, TX watching Peregrine Falcons take out Rock Pigeons, to vacations around the world and her backyard in the Hill Country of Texas. After retiring from a career in Information Technology, Carol moved to Louisville, CO and never looked back. Once here, she joined Boulder Audubon and then became a board member. Carol is also a docent at the Denver Zoo, specializing in the Great Apes. She loves to talk to people about the zoo animals and how people can help the animals survive in their native habitats. Carol still enjoys ‘birding’ in her local community and connecting people to nature. She counts her best bird in her backyard in Louisville as a Northern Goshawk which appeared not once, but twice on her back fence.
Courtney Rella is a dedicated volunteer and advocate for bird conservation and environmental education, with a strong focus on raptors and avian ecology. She serves as a docent and educational outreach volunteer with the Rocky Mountain Raptor Program, where she works with permanently disabled raptor ambassadors for enrichment and to engage the public through learning and conservation messaging. She is also involved with the Denver Field Ornithologists as a field trip leader and conservation board member, with Bird Conservancy of the Rockies as a raptor nest monitor, and with Longmont Raptor Watch contributing data to long-term research and species protection initiatives. Her interest in birds also sparked a passion for photography, which she uses as another way to observe, document, and share the beauty of avian life. She additionally supports avian research as a bird banding station data volunteer, assisting with the collection and management of data critical to understanding bird populations and migration patterns. Through these roles and interests, she demonstrates a deep commitment to wildlife conservation, citizen science, and environmental education.