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…

We spent the day working the sites around Silverthorne – visiting some several times! We added three new ticks to the list but, frustrating, continued to miss out on a couple of targets. Oddly, a number of our best birds had a pink or red theme.

Today we leave western Colorado and the Rockies, head to the airport to change vehicles and start our adventures in the grasslands.

It was a long transfer from Gunnison to Silverthorne but we managed to do a bit of birding on the way. We’d stopped off in the town park in Buena Vista to follow up on reports of Lewis’s Woodpecker. A couple of circuits of the park failed to produce the goods but we did add Hairy Woodpecker and Pine Siskin to the trip list. A friendly local asked what we were looking for and when we told him he said you need to head up to the Post Office. We did and there they were! You’ve got to have a bit of luck sometimes. We arrived at our overnight location by lunchtime and decided to hit Loveland Pass for our next target – White-tailed Ptarmigan. No luck despite a couple of hours searching but the place was over-run with skiers, snow-boards and hikers. A chance meeting with a couple of birders led to a great piece of detective work by Jane. According to the women there were reports of Rosy-finch and some other goodies close to Silverthorne. Checking on eBird we found a couple of reports but the locations didn’t tally. Jane eventually worked it out and we headed off, having checked in to the Luxury Inn & Suites, to a new development on the edge of town. It took a bit more detective work before we found a house with garden feeders but then the show began! A constant changing cast of birds as they visited the feeders before flying back into the forest: Clark’s Nutcracker, Pine Grosbeak, Brown-capped Rosy-finch, Crossbill, Mountain & Black-capped Chickadee, Pygmy Nuthatch and more! It was nice to have a bit of luck for a change.

It was a half-hour car ride from our motel to get us to the lek, one hour before sunrise, as per instructions. The viewing site is a small crescent-shaped lay-by with a low stone wall to obscure the vehicles. You have to arrive, windows down, no lights and bumper to bumper parking. Once the lay-by is full there’s no parking on the road for 11/2 miles – basically you’re b*****ed if you don’t get a spot. You can’t leave until the birds do. The temperature was -7 deg c which meant wearing several layers! Slowly the darkness receded and we could make out the expanse of flat grassland reaching to the low range of hills beyond. We looked and looked but couldn’t see a sausage – or grouse for that matter. Eventually the ‘warden’ came along the line of cars pointing out the lek, which by this time, was in full swing. It must have been a kilometre away behind a line of willows – requiring ‘scopes to even see the birds. But there they were and we weren’t going to turn our noses up at the ‘adequate’ views. Apparently, in days gone by, they used to lek a lot closer – hence the elaborate procedures to avoid disturbance. By 07.15 the show was over and we could return to the motel for a well-earned breakfast. With Gunnison Sage Grouse firmly on our list, 31/2 out of 4 isn’t bad going I’d say. The rest of the day was spent exploring birding spots around Crested Butte and Gunnison – but like yesterday we were severely curtailed by lack of access (through winter road closures) to some of the best sites. Still Clark’s Grebe, Williamson’s Sapsucker, all three nuthatches, Cassin’s Finch and, in the afternoon, Yellow-rumped Warbler (our first ‘proper’ migrant) provided reasonable supporting cast.

Today was dedicated to visiting Black Canyon (of the Gunnison) National Park. Another truly stunning piece of Colorado landscape. It took us ’till 9 o’clock to get there and having paid our $30 admission – no reduction for pensioners – we discovered that the road was still closed beyond the Visitors Centre, meaning that South Rim Road birding (some of the best in the park) was off the agenda. We then enquired about the Oak Flats trail for a stab at Dusky Grouse. ‘Yes it was open but it was a little slippy and you might be better off using spikes’ said the Ranger, but a guy managed to get round the two mile loop yesterday without a problem’. As we need Dusky for one of the ‘big six’ we decided to give it a bash. It took us two hours to get half way with Jane spending as much time on the ground as she did standing! Two guys ahead of us, but going in the opposite direction, reported seeing three grouse though all had disappeared over the ridge. We stuck it out until lunch but frustratingly only heard a couple of calls. After lunch we gave it another two hours, this time from the safety of the overlook but again no joy. Mercifully it wasn’t a ‘dot day’ with a small handful of ticks added and we did do a recce in the evening for our crack at Gunnison Sage Grouse – the rarest of our trip targets.

Monumental – the scenery that is, the birding not so much. We started the day in the Colorado National Monument park – a bit of a hidden gem, with more than a nod to the Grand Canyon. The birding was OK, with some additions to the trip list like Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jay, Peregrine and Black-throated Sparrow. After a walk on the Devil’s Kitchen trail we took a side trip up onto the ‘highlands’ around Pinyon Mesa, adding Western Bluebird and Cooper’s Hawk. Lunch was taken at lower altitude along the Colorado River, at the Connected Lakes section of the previously visited Colorado River State Park and the adjacent Audubon site. A brief pit-stop back at the hotel and we finished the day at Horse Thief Canyon SWA – barely a rustler in sight and even fewer birds! So a day more memorable for the scenery than the birds though we have now passed the 100 mark for the trip. Can’t believe we’ve already been here a week!

We’ve been here long enough now to stop ducking the issue of… sparrow identification! America has a plethora of these ‘little brown jobs’, many of which look identical to the untutored eye! So far we’ve managed to see and identify four: White-crowned, Song, Sage, Vesper. Two of these were seen on todays leg from Rangely to Fruita – our overnight stop for the next couple of days. Our journey included a drive up the Canyon Pintado, over the Douglas Pass at 8268ft, down to Highline Lake State Park, before checking in to our La Quinta hotel, which overlooks the Colorado River State Park and the Colorado National Monument. We’ve definitely seen more small birds since we headed down and south – the temperature this afternoon reaching the high 60’s f. As well as sparrows we’ve seen a few new waders, including: Yellowlegs – Greater & Lesser, Black-necked Stilt, American Avocet and Long-billed Curlew. The trip list is beginning to look more respectable.

We knew when we woke up that our morning Sharp-tailed Grouse ‘hunting’ session was our last before we had to move on west. After yesterday’s hard graft – for little return – I wasn’t optimistic. We’d already worked out that we weren’t far enough into the hills at the site north of Hayden but the road was impassable – we’d nearly got bogged down in the wet mud on the tack and had seen others do the same. One car abandoned by the roadside had come off the track and needed recovering. Still we arrived for dawn and gave it some time before finally moving on to the Twenty Mile Road site – our last roll of the dice. We parked up between the gate and the ranch on the top of the rise and started scanning the likely lekking spots. Yesterday I’d seen three distant birds in flight which could have been them but I wasn’t sure, so when a single bird, followed by another, landed in the top of a distant bush I was hopeful. Careful checking with scopes by both of us, Jane in the back and me in the front to avoid disturbance and we were confident we had our target! Eventually a male landed on the snow-covered grassy knoll and did a bit of strutting but we suspect any females were the other side of the ridge and out of view – his and ours. Grouse species number two under our belt, we returned to our hotel for breakfast and then headed west to our overnight at the Moosehead Motel, Rangely. Our itinerary was thrown off course when we discovered that the Dinosaur National Monument park was still closed for the winter. We occupied our time with a quick trip into Utah, adding another State to our list, and did several sites around the town. An Osprey on the nest at Kenney Reservoir and a Downy Woodpecker in the park adjacent to our motel were the only afternoon additions to the list. It’s pretty clear that small birds are at a premium – few migrants have arrived this far / high north yet. The search continues..!

Sometimes in birding things just don’t work out. We started and finished the day at two different Sharp-tailed Grouse lek sites, but didn’t get a sniff. We spent the rest of the day visiting half a dozen birding locations around Steamboat Springs and did manage to add a few trip ticks, but it was hard going. The temperature was below freezing for most of the day and most of the water bodies we visited were understandably frozen. In one small corner of Stagecoach State Park reservoir we did find a few Barrow’s Goldeneye and around the ski resort several Stellar’s Jay. We spent a long time looking at flocks of Junco feeding by the roadside – mostly they were the localised race of Red-backed, with a few Pink-sided individuals amongst them. Animal highlight was a distant Porcupine. After thirteen hours of non-stop birding a MacDonald’s, a beer and an early night!

Having grabbed the grouse the evening before we had the option of setting off west, from our overnight stop at Walden, before breakfast. I took the bags out to the car and discovered it covered in a layer of snow. We headed off on the 14 to join up with the 40 just a few miles before the high-point of our journey at Rabbit Ears Pass, at close on 3000m. The further we went west the worse driving conditions became until just before the pass we were in an almost total white-out. We managed to join the end of a convoy of cars and got over the summit as the traffic management signs were saying passenger vehicles were required to fit snow chains! The worst of the weather subsided as we descend from the summit and we stopped for breakfast in Steamboat Springs. A walk along the river produced Bonaparte’s Gull, American Dipper and a Mink. A recce of a couple of grouse sites and an early check-in at our hotel in Craig gave us a relaxed afternoon and an opportunity to look at some of the local birding hotspots. Best sighting was of a Golden Eagle on it’s pylon nest.