Our last full day of birding in Colorado. We started with a pre-breakfast trip back to Pueblo Reservoir to ‘collect’ Curve-billed Thrasher in the camp ground – first bird we heard / saw. Then we spent most of the day at the lovely, though rather birdless, Fountain Creek Regional Park. We did manage to add one tick though – Grey Flycatcher. We checked in to our final overnight stop at Castle Rock before heading out to Castle Wood Canyon State Park for a last couple of hours birding before dark. Nothing of particular note but Pine Siskin, Mountain Chickadee, Spotted Towhee and Northern Flicker in the trees, whilst overhead White-throated Swift mingled with Golden Eagle, Cooper’s Hawk and Turkey Vulture – not a bad end to the day really. Today we’re heading for the airport for an overnight flight back home – we might be able to squeeze in a couple of ‘on route’ sites on the way. As always, birding in the States has been a great mix – good birds, nice people and terrific scenery. What’s not to like?

We spent the day birding the Arkansas River valley, starting with a pre-breakfast return to Holbrook Reservoir, where we added Forster’s Tern and Marbled Godwit to the trip list. After breakfast it was a short hop north west to Pueblo and the Lake Pueblo State Park – beginning with Valco Ponds where we added Hooded Merganser, Great Egret and Greater Scaup. Then on to the Visitors Centre for Bushtit and Rock Canyon for Ash-throated Flycatcher. In the afternoon at Swallow SWA we had another Great Egret and a Snowy for good measure. Final new bird for the day and my USA list was Cackling Goose at the City Park in Pueblo. Not a bad day but the prospect of adding new ticks is becoming more remote as the days go by – surely we’re due a ‘dot day’!

We started the day at Two Buttes State Park looking for Ladder-backed Woodpecker and hoping to catch more early migrants. The scenery was awesome and our target was quickly located – a pair actually, but they were always in the tops of the trees. We did also add another warbler to the list, this time Tennessee. Next we dropped in on the Lamar Community College, where they have a nature trail behind the campus. Unfortunately we failed to ‘do the double’ with Red-headed Woodpecker – which is proving tricky. Lunch was taken visiting several sites around the John Martin Reservoir State Park and although the various habitats looked good we failed to add anything new to the list. Ferruginous Hawk was a much needed addition on route to our final couple of stops – two adjacent inland saline water bodies – Cheraw Lake and Holbrook Reservoir. Both locations produced the goods – at the first we got reasonable views of breeding (?) Snowy Plover and at the later, two more water birds – Common Loon and Red-breasted Merganser. Oh and another Snow Goose! – this one being a first winter bird.

The day didn’t start well. We’d had a hasty breakfast and were well on our way to the first birding location when Jane realised she’d left her coat back at the hotel. We decided to press on in the hope of catching an overnight fall of migrants. Unfortunately Elkhart cemetery was deathly quiet but we did manage to salvage something with a group of distant Wilson’s Phalarope at the poo ponds. Then it was a 65 mile round trip to collect the coat before we could move on to our next group of locations in the Cimarron National Grasslands. By this stage there were more birds about and we added several trip ticks – including another game bird, this time Scaled Quail. We were having a pleasant, if rather protracted, conversation with Game Warden Hudson at Middle Spring (I don’t think he gets to talk to many people in the winter!) when Jane spotted a warbler. Trying not to be rude but wanting to get a closer view I edged nearer the bird, nestling under a bush. I instantly recognised it as Worm-eating – I’ve seen a few in Texas but it was definitely not on my radar for this trip! We moved on to Cottonwood Canyon, Comanche National Grassland for lunch and more birds, including on route a flock of migrating Lark Bunting – State bird of Colorado. We added more ticks in the afternoon including – yes you’ve guessed it – a couple of sparrows!

Now the pressure is off, having finished our Colorado & Kansas Chicken Run, we’ve been taking things a bit easier. Mind you it was perishing cold all day so there was quite a bit of birding from the car. Having had a text exchange with Megan the night before about our lack of waders (shorebirds) we were pleasantly surprised to find a few when we revisited Scott Lake SP first thing. On return to Scott City, and a trip to the local park and water treatment facility, we added more and with the Solitary Sandpiper which Jane managed to see at Put ’em Back Pond our day total for shorebirds finished on 14! This included the biggest surprise of two Piping Plover, which have always been a top target on previous trips. Given that this part of Kansas is approx 1200 miles from the Pacific coast and 1400 from the Atlantic, it’s amazing that any waders come this way at all – and how they find the very limited watery habitats in the vast tracks of prairie is quite a puzzle. Another water bird which caused a stir was a lone Snow Goose at the ‘poo ponds’ in Scott City – I’ll have to check my records but a ‘first’ for the US I think. A few more sites were done on our way to our overnight stop at Hugoton and a late afternoon visit there to the town cemetery produce another welcome addition to the ‘game bird’ list – Northern Bobwhite.

After another early start – made even harder by losing an hour when we crossed the State line – we were in the ‘hide’, overlooking the lek, well before it got light. Their distinctive ‘popping’ call rang out long before we could see them and then, as the dawn broke, up to 18 male Lesser Prairie-Chicken – the last of the ‘Big Six’ firmly on our list and the end of our ‘Chicken Run’ experience! There are several ways you can see these amazing Mid-West – Grouse & Chickens specialities. If you are prepared to pay for the full treatment there are a number of top quality tour groups who do the trip – FieldGuides being one example, with the possibility of our own Norfolk Megan in the lead. Or you can organise your own itinerary, stopping off at individual lek hides – though booking from the UK is difficult and some are uber expensive. We’ve seen ‘lex experiences’ with (obligatory) overnight home-stays for $750pp! Alternatively you can do it like us – all self-arranged and using, where possible, public viewing locations. The only exception being Lesser Prairie-Chicken which, because of the dwindling population and all leks being on private property, you have to book an organised viewing. We chose the one organised by Nature Conservancy but even so it was $150pp – with no extras provided! Greater & Lesser P-C look very similar and with the added complication of hybridisation you have to be at a lek to be sure of your identification. With our expert on hand, we were able to study individual birds in good light and, most importantly, listen to their distinctive vocalisations. The two hybrid birds present at our lek certainly sounded very different from either Greater or Lesser – there are also some marginal plumage differences. With the minor upset over Dusky Grouse, we have had a near clean sweep. With just under a week still to go we’ve now tweaked our itinerary to concentrate on early migrants, including those pesky sparrows – we’ve added three new ones today!

Our day was spent on a slow transfer from Greeley to our overnight stop at Oakley – the place which made Buffalo Bill famous (by killing loads of Bison). A few years ago, after a couple of trips to Canada, I was asked what it was like – ‘flat, white and cold’ was my reply. Today we were in Kansas which, if I were to describe at least the bit we’ve driven through, it would be ‘flat, parched and cold’! Very reminiscent of the scene in Castaway when Tom Hanks delivers the unopened package. But I digress. We stopped off at several birding spots along the route and managed to squeeze out a few more trip ticks – bringing our total to a gross. None of them were rare or even scarce, in fact common on previous trips, but all surprisingly late additions to the list: Brown Thrasher, Cedar Waxwing (Jane only) Purple Martin and Northern Cardinal. An early night ready for our final target tomorrow – the last of the ‘big six’…

Thanks to more of Jane’s superb detective work we managed to get reasonable views of the days target bird – Greater Prairie-chicken – before breakfast. We spent there rest of the day touring the various birding locations around Wray, adding a handful of trip ticks.

Now we’re heading to Kansas for hopefully the last of the ‘big six’.

Our first day in the grasslands and we wake up to blue skies and…. howling winds! The morning’s itinerary was a drive to and around the Pawnee National Grasslands, in search of scarce / rare prairie species. I think we averaged about a bird a mile on the trip round – all except Horned Lark, which were everywhere. We did eventually bump into three McCown’s Longspur (now renamed Thick-billed in the move towards political correctness) – a really nice looking relative of Lapland Bunting (Longspur). Later, a skulking bird in longer grass – first considered to be a sparrow sp. – turned out to be a non-breeding Chestnut-collared Longspur. We had no luck finding the mythical Mountain Plover, ‘uncommon and very local – nests on shortgrass prairies – winters on dry barren ground – world population <20k’, on the reserve so took a short detour to a dried-up lake, where Jane managed to pull one out of the bag! A few other bits & pieces during the day but the persistent strong winds forced an ‘early bath’.

We were acutely aware from various reports, including a WhatsApp from Megan (Norfolk based birder) who is coincidentally leading a birding tour out here at the moment, that we were still missing a couple of major targets. Having visited the two sites for these species four times each over the past two days we awoke, for our last morning in the Rockies, with little optimism. Jane wanted an early visit to Loveland Pass to look for the Ptarmigan but I thought we should start at the garden feeders in Silverthorne for Black Rosy-finch. In the end that’s what we did, agreeing a clear cut-off to give ourselves time to look for the Ptarmigan before heading back to Denver. We arrived at Royal Red Bird Drive (an apt location given yesterday’s post!) to a busy set of feeders. It wasn’t long before we had our first new species – a couple of spectacular Evening Grosbeak. Numbers of Rosy-finch fluctuated as they were regularly flushed by the nuisance squirrel. It was getting nearly time to leave when finally a Black Rosy-finch flew in to join the other two members of the family – Brown-capped and Grey-crowned. Phew, a mega bird and a major relief. We departed and headed up the pass to start our search for White-tailed Ptarmigan – one of the most difficult of the mountain game birds to find. We stopped and scanned extensively at the first site before moving further up towards the summit. As we pulled in to the last lay-by we came across Ryan from Birding Man Adventures – he was guiding two guests, looking for the same elusive target. He disappeared on a snowy trail over the hill, reappearing ten minutes later saying he’d found them and did we want to come?! We yomped up the hillside to a spot where we could see a small clump of willow twigs sticking up out of the snow. Looking harder we could see two, pure white, Ptarmigan! They allowed a reasonably close approach, completely un-bothered by our presence. Ryan said he thinks they rely on their cryptic plumage rather than flying off – ‘you ain’t seen me, right’! The rest of the day was spent doing the vehicle change-over and visiting Barr Lake State Park, where we added Wood Duck to our trip list, before driving on to our over-night stop at Greeley. Two fabulous birds, one black the other white, seen in the very last hours of our ten day tour of the Rockies. Now on to the prairies…