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Dancing at dawn, a male Greater Prairie-Chicken wows our group with an incredible performance at the Bledsoe lek. If he impresses the other chickens as much as he impressed us, he has a great chance of mating! (Photo by guide Chris Benesh)

This year's first Colorado Grouse tour was a great success. We were really fortunate with the weather, being able to get to the places that we wanted to go and see most of what we wanted to see. It was clear to us that Colorado was experiencing a pretty significant drought this year; compared with last year, there was a great deal less snowpack, and reservoirs were well below capacity.

Colorado is quite a diverse destination. In order to see the grouse and grouse-like birds, we had to cover some ground. In fact, we covered just shy of 2400 miles - that's a lot of Colorado! In doing so, however, we got a fun appreciation of just how varied and beautiful things are there.

It's always hard to pick favorites, but ask we did, and you all came up with some deserving choices. The runaway winner this year was the Greater Sage-Grouse seen northeast of Walden. The scenery there is splendid, and we were situated right at the end of the lek, providing for a wonderful display experience. The pair of White-tailed Ptarmigan received the second highest vote count, and no doubt would have taken top honors were it not for the fact that some stayed back at the trailhead to avoid steep, icy conditions on the trail. Brown-capped Rosy-Finch was the next biggest vote getter, and it was one that kept us in suspense for most of the trip. The lack of snow meant that most were already back on their high, barren, alpine breeding habitat. Thankfully, the feeders in Silverthorne came through for us at the end.

Greater Prairie-Chicken got two votes as well, as it was indeed a wonderful show to witness. No doubt if we had allowed for more than a pick-3, this would have gotten more votes. And the plain and perky Juniper Titmouse snuck in with a couple of votes, in part for its novelty and part for its animated self. Barrow's Goldeneye was the last multi-vote getter. Again, heightened suspense over whether we would track this one down paid off in the end with nice studies at Windy Gap Reservoir. Two more grouse made it on to the favorites list, too: the female Dusky Grouse (number 600 for Jackie), and the Sharp-tailed Grouse. Two jays made the list, Steller's and Pinyon, the Pinyon Jay sightings were especially fantastic. Also in the blue vein was Mountain Bluebird, which is a wonderful shade of blue. Red was represented by Cinnamon Teal and Pine Grosbeak. And rounding out the list were Black-throated Sparrow, Pygmy Nuthatch, and Burrowing Owl.

Thanks to all of you for joining Terry and me on our exploration of Colorado. It was a pleasure sharing the antics of grouse with you and hearing all of your stories. Until the next adventure, all the best!

--Chris

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KEYS FOR THIS LIST
One of the following keys may be shown in brackets for individual species as appropriate: * = heard only, I = introduced, E = endemic, N = nesting, a = austral migrant, b = boreal migrant

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BIRDS

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MAMMALS

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ADDITIONAL COMMENTS

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Totals for the tour: 143 bird taxa and 29 mammal taxa