Colorado Chicken Run

I have recently returned from a birding trip to Colorado where our goal was to observe prairie chickens and grouse on their leks.  What exactly is a lek you might legitimately inquire?  A lek is defined as “an aggregation of males that gather to engage in competitive displays that may entice visiting females who are surveying prospective partners for copulation.”  This is an annual mating ritual for these birds and they return to the same lek grounds each spring and have done so for many generations.   To see these activities one must rise early and head out to the lek at 4:30 AM.  Once there you must remain in a blind of some sort and be very quiet so as not to frighten them off or disturb their activities.  These birds do a dance of foot stopping, inflate various air sacs on their necks or breast and offer various vocalizations to entice the nearby females.  They frequently indulge in confronting another male in the lek and attempt to drive him off by intimidation, such as, getting down low and meeting the other face to face which is generally followed by some form of leaping into the air much as you would see in a more familiar domestic rooster fight.  Fortunate for us we were able to visit five active leks and see all preform their ritual--the five include Lesser and Greater Prairie Chicken, Greater and Gunnison Sage Grouse, Sharp-tailed Grouse and a very cooperative Dusky Grouse all of which I have provided pictures of for this article (except the Gunnison Sage-Grouse much too far away).

In addition to the above game birds, we were also fortunate to observe four others—Ring-necked Pheasant, White-tailed Ptarmigan, Rio Grande Turkey and Chucker.  Of these four the White-tailed Ptarmigan is a very difficult species to add to one’s life list, primarily because it resides at high elevations.  We were fortunate to observe four of them at Loveland Pass near Dillon.  The four were foraging on a grass outcropping from the deep snow found there even at this late date.  The bird is all white at this stage of the year but will soon molt into its summer plumage which features a mottled dark brown coloration.  I was not able to get pictures of sufficient quality of the White-tailed Ptarmigan to i in include in this article.  However, the Chucker was very cooperative and posed for his photo.  This bird is generally found at lower altitudes.  We located our bird at Coal Canon near Cameo, CO.  This species is an introduced resident of the Great Basin.  It prefers arid rocky slopes and cliffs near water.  It is found in desert shrub, pinyon-juniper and montane brush habitats.  Its call begins with a slow Chuka, Chucka and ends with a strong ChuKARA , thus sounding as if it is calling it name.

I will conclude by saying that this was a very successful trip even though we experienced snow ever day but our first and last day on this eleven day outing.  In all we drove over 2000 miles to accomplish our mission.  In addition, our bird list totaled over 160 species which included many other target birds.  In fact, we only missed one of our target species for this trip—Williamson’s Sapsucker.

Finally, on May 16^th I off to drive and spend the summer in Alaska.  I will have the opportunity to re-visit many places I have been on fourteen previous trips to this amazing state and will spend some time exploring regions in Canada I have not previously visited.  I plan to write a blog of my travels and experiences along the way and will be contributing articles to the Sun about those adventures. If you would like to follow me on my blog simply go to www.irasciblej-alongthetrail.blogspot.com and join and you will automatically receive each blog as it is posted.  There may be times when the internet is not available and I will not be able to post them, so please be patient.  I hope you all have a very cool and wet summer back here in Texas, I know I will enjoy cool and beautiful Alaska.

Jim—irasciblej@gmail.com

Chucker

Sharp-tailed Grouse

Dusky Grouse

Lesser Prairie Grouse

Greater Prairie Chicken

Greater Sage-Grouse