lit a candle 4h agoBought Birding Colorado years before I ever set foot in the state, just to read how someone could care that much about where a bird nests. He wrote, near the front of it, something like "the joy is in the looking, not just the list." Never forgot that.
Their story
Hugh Eppich Kingery, one of Colorado's most renowned birders, authors and conservation volunteers, died on 11 July 2026 at his home amid the scrub oak and canyon cliffs outside Franktown, Colorado. He was 94. He died peacefully, surrounded by family, ten days after celebrating his ninety-fourth birthday, in the house…
Hugh Eppich Kingery, one of Colorado's most renowned birders, authors and conservation volunteers, died on 11 July 2026 at his home amid the scrub oak and canyon cliffs outside Franktown, Colorado. He was 94. He died peacefully, surrounded by family, ten days after celebrating his ninety-fourth birthday, in the house he shared with his wife and lifelong birding partner, Urling Kingery.
Kingery's love of the Colorado outdoors began in boyhood and grew into decades of unpaid work for birds and the environment. A graduate of Denver's East High School, Cornell University (zoology, 1954) and the University of Denver College of Law (1965), he served a four-year tour with the U.S. Air Force's Air Defense Command Ground Observer Corps in Colorado (1954-1958). After administrative work with IBM and the Colorado Conservation Council, he began a legal career in 1966 as a staff lawyer for Husky Oil, retiring in 1987. From then on, birding, avian science and Colorado conservation became a full-time volunteer vocation that lasted longer than his professional career.
He was a founding member of Denver Audubon in 1968. His most ambitious project was the first Colorado Breeding Bird Atlas (1986-1998): he initiated and directed the survey, mobilizing about 1,200 field volunteers across 1,745 habitat blocks of three square miles each, surveying some 200 blocks himself (often with Urling), managing the data, recruiting species authors and editing the encyclopedic reference published in 1998. With Urling he also originated beginner birdwatching classes through University of Colorado Adult Education (1979-1982) and then Denver Audubon (1983-2020), introducing hundreds of Coloradans to birds. For decades Denver Audubon's birding helpline rang straight to the Kingerys' home phone.
Kingery wrote Birding Colorado (FalconGuides, 2008; second edition 2023), a handbook to roughly ninety premier birding sites across the state, and for twenty-three years edited the Mountain West Region for American Birds. He was made an associate of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in 1990 and recognized for 10,000 hours of volunteer service. Having summited all fifty-three of Colorado's fourteeners and observed at least four hundred bird species in the state, he became the fourth member of the rare Fourteeners/400 Club.
He is survived by Urling, his wife of fifty-two years; daughters Anne Kingery-Schwartz (Kevin Schwartz) and Kate Kingery (Dave Hunzincker); and grandchildren Elinor, Jack, Bryson and Ember. He was preceded in death by his younger brother, Karl. A memorial service is set for 10 a.m. on Sunday, 18 October 2026, at Denver Audubon's Kingery Nature Center at Chatfield State Park in Littleton. In lieu of flowers, the family asks for donations to Denver Audubon or the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
Biography adapted from The Denver Post (Pat O'Driscoll, 19 Sep 2026); Denver Audubon and Colorado birding community records.
In their own words
“Hugh and Urling were the best known birders in the state. Hugh was the leading birder in Colorado.”
Doris Cruze, former Denver Audubon president, quoted in The Denver Post, 19 Sep 2026
Photos
4Hugh Kingery at his Franktown home, March 2010
Mar 2010 · by People Forever
Urling and Hugh Kingery
by People Forever
Hugh and Urling Kingery at their Franktown birding haven, 2012
by People Forever
Birding at the Kingery property near Franktown, 2012
by People Forever
That's the line I remember too, from the intro.