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 the 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…

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.