Hugh Kingery, one of Colorado’s most renowned birders and conservationists, died on July 11, 2026, 10 days after celebrating his 94th birthday. Surrounded by family, he died peacefully in the home he shared with his wife and birding partner, Urling, amidst the scrub oak and canyon cliffs outside Franktown.
Kingery’s boyhood love of the Colorado outdoors spurred him on to decades of volunteer work for birds and the environment. Throughout his life, he volunteered at the intersection of birding and environmental activism. Among his many activities, he was a founding member of Denver Audubon (1968), project director and editor of the first Colorado Breeding Bird Atlas (1986-1998), leader and compiler of numerous Christmas, spring and fall bird counts, and state coordinator of Colorado’s annual Breeding Bird Survey.
A graduate of Denver’s East High School, Cornell University in New York (zoology, 1954) and the University of Denver College of Law (1965), Kingery served a four-year tour of duty with the U.S. Air Force’s Air Defense Command Ground Observer Corps in Colorado (1954-1958). After several years of administrative jobs with IBM Corp. and the Colorado Conservation Council, he began his legal career in 1966 as a staff lawyer for Husky Oil Co., where he worked until retirement in 1987. From then on, Kingery’s devotion to birds, avian science and the Colorado environment was a mostly full-time volunteer career that lasted longer than his professional one.
In his first decade of “retirement,” Kingery undertook his most ambitious bird-related mission. He initiated and directed the Colorado Breeding Bird Atlas project, mobilizing 1,200 field volunteers to document the state’s breeding birds in 1,745 “blocks” of habitat, 3 square miles each. Working full time without pay for more than a decade, he supervised field personnel (and surveyed 200 of the blocks himself, many with Urling), managed the data they gathered, recruited authors to write inspiring bird descriptions for each species, and edited it all into an encyclopedic reference volume published in 1998.
Together with Urling, Kingery originated beginner birdwatching classes through University of Colorado Adult Education (1979-1982) and then Denver Audubon (1983-2020), introducing many hundreds of Coloradans to birding.
“Hugh and Urling were the best known birders in the state,” said longtime Denver birder Doris Cruze, who was Denver Audubon president in the mid-2000s. “Hugh was the leading birder in Colorado.” For decades, Denver Audubon’s birding helpline went directly to the Kingerys’ home phone.
The Denver Museum of Nature & Science made Hugh an associate in 1990 and recognized him for 10,000 hours of volunteer service. Even the US Army Corps of Engineers paid tribute — for “birdwatching,” as Hugh would later joke. The Corps gave him its Civilian Service Medal to recognize his 12-year study
and census of a Great Blue Heron colony in the South Platte River floodplain where the Corps’ was building Chatfield Dam and Reservoir in the 1960s and ‘70s.
Kingery’s lifelong passion for both mountains and birds also put him in exclusive company for a very rare birding feat. Having summited all 53 of the state’s 14,000-foot mountains, he went on to observe at least 400 bird species in Colorado (out of 522 ever recorded in the state). That made him the fourth member of the “Fourteeners/400 Club,” which numbers just 10 men and four women who have achieved that difficult double.
Throughout his life, Kingery wrote extensively about birds. Assisted by Urling, he was author of Birding Colorado (2008, second edition 2023) in the FalconGuides series, a how-to handbook for 90 premier birding hotspots around the state.
For 23 years, he was Mountain West Region editor for American Birds, National Audubon’s quarterly chronicle of continental bird distribution.
As perpetually busy as he was, Kingery had room for serendipity. Just one year into his so-called retirement, he accepted a request to guide a pair of beginning birders on their first-ever U.S. birdwatching field trip. On a summer visit in 1988 to Colorado’s Western Slope, former President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalynn Carter met up with
Kingery and followed him into the field outside Gunnison. The resulting checklist of birds they saw that day included a rare celebrity — Red-backed Hawk, a South American species never seen north of Colombia until it showed up in Colorado the previous year.
The retired President raved about the bird later in a thank-you letter to Kingery.
Hugh Kingery is survived by his wife of 52 years, Urling, their daughters Anne Kingery-Schwartz (Kevin Schwartz) and Kate Kingery (Dave Hunzincker), and four grandchildren (Elinor, Jack, Bryson and Ember). He was preceded in death by his younger brother, Karl.
A memorial service will be held at 10 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 18 at Denver Audubon’s Kingery Nature Center (11280 Waterton Road, Littleton) at the south end of Chatfield State Park. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you consider donations to Denver Audubon or the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
