We had an early breakfast before heading off at dawn, just up the road, to Rocky Mountain Arsenal wildlife refuge – a ‘brown field’ land reclamation scheme on the outskirts of Denver. A good place to kick-start our Colorado list. An early highlight was a very smart male Horned Lark – later we saw a shed-load! Plenty of ducks and grebes to keep us busy, a few bush birds – including Western Meadow Lark – and the usual raptors – Bald Eagle, Northern Harrier and Red-tailed Hawk. Bison were a highlight, along with Coyote and Prairie Dogs of one variety or another. We left the plains and headed west towards the snow-capped mountains, arriving at our over-night destination of Walden by early afternoon – giving us four hours birding the vast sage brush prairies and doing a recce for our first grouse target Greater Sage Grouse. On the circuit, which also included many ponds (mostly frozen) and riparian woods, we had some good stuff including: Sage Thrasher – only seen a couple of times before – Great Horned Owl on the nest, Sandhill Crane and more duck sp. We ended the session with a trip to reconnoitre the Sage Grouse lek for the morning. Some reports say that the evening can be as good as the morning but with better light. We arrived at the spot, scanned, and almost immediately saw the head of a male buried in the vegetation. An hour and a half patient watching produced four more and some brief displaying. We eventually decided to leave driving back along the track and over the ridge. There on the skyline was another bird and as we scanned we located at least another dozen! Last bird of the day was a lone soaring Golden Eagle – presumably looking for a grouse supper! A really great first day birding in Colorado with nothing to grouse about.

We woke up this morning to serious snow, with daytime temperatures unlikely to get above freezing – we’ll have to see what the day brings!