Colorado Summer Week Jun 11—17, 2007
Posted by Brennan Mulrooney
Brennan Mulrooney
Brennan Mulrooney was born and raised in San Diego, California. Growing up, his heart and mind were captured by the ocean. He split his summer days between helping out behi...Related Trips
Colorado in summer has a lot to offer the visiting birder. I can think of no other tour I lead that offers such a wide array of habitats, with so many special birds, in such a short time. In just five days of birding we take in the endless vistas of shortgrass prairies on the Pawnee National Grassland, we sample the abundance of life surrounding prairie wetlands, we find a profusion of bird life in the canyons of the foothills, and we enjoy the thrill of birding in one of the most scenic parks in the country, Rocky Mountain National Park. By covering such a diversity of habitats, with elevations ranging from just under 5,000 feet to just over 12,000 feet, and doing so in the middle of the country?where east meets west?we compile a pretty interesting list of birds. Choosing highlights from this tour is always a challenge, but there were a few moments this year that did stand out.
One of the most difficult birds to find on this tour just happens to be the one that graces the cover of our checklist. Mountain Plover is a bird that has unfortunately been experiencing a population decline in recent years; it has gotten to the point now that a day birding the Pawnee doesn’t necessarily guarantee a sighting. Unlike so many of the other breeding species we see out there, this bird doesn’t go bursting into the air, belting out a song on the wing?generally making a spectacle of itself. Rather, it very quietly walks through the short grass (at least you hope for it to move), doing a pretty stellar job of blending into its surroundings; it’s a bit like a dirt clod on legs. When we do find these birds, it’s often because their silhouettes break the horizon on a distant ridge, and we have to content ourselves with somewhat distant scope views. So this year when we had not one, but two different Mountain Plovers, from 50 feet or less, I was ecstatic. The first bird was a male and seemed totally oblivious to our presence. The views were so good that we didn’t even use the scopes; the bird was so close we couldn’t even keep him in them! For about 15 minutes we watched him strut back and forth, right in front of us. The second sighting, a female crossing the road right in front of us, would have been the highlight of any other year, but after our previous luck we didn’t even get out of the vans!
While the hunt for the plover is always the focus of our day on Pawnee, it’s by no means the only interesting bird out there. In fact many of the best birds on the tour occur out on the Pawnee. We had excellent experiences with McCown’s Longspurs and the relatively scarce Chestnut-collared Longspurs. Both wowed us with their flight displays and also perched close for superb scope views. Flamboyant Lark Buntings were constant companions as we traversed the grasslands, and two separate sightings of Ferruginous Hawk were fantastic given our lack of luck with this species in recent years. And the birds weren’t alone in making this day memorable; the mammals did their best to steal the show. It started with unbeatable looks at two swift fox pups playing at the entrance to their den, and ended with point-blank looks at a very cute thirteen-lined ground squirrel. In between we had several views of two other charismatic grassland species: pronghorn and black-tailed prairie dogs.
The second memory that stands out for me is our experience with what is probably the most sought after species on this tour, the White-tailed Ptarmigan. Of the three ptarmigan species, it has the most restricted range and usually requires the most effort to find. In the Lower 48 it occurs only above timberline on the highest peaks of the Rockies, the Cascades, and a couple of other scattered mountaintops. There are few spots where one can hope to find them near a road, and Trailridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park is one of them. The strategy is to get out onto the tundra early, hopefully before the wind starts blowing, and this means an early morning hike at about 12,000 feet elevation; let’s just say it’s a bit chilly. Aside from the cold, the challenge in finding a ptarmigan on the tundra is that these birds look exactly like the rocks they like to sit on. You can be within mere feet of them and not even know it unless they move, and often they don’t. This year we weren’t out of the vans more than 10 minutes before Barry had spotted a male perched up on a small boulder less than 100 feet from the trail. The low angle morning light made the scene look like something out of a nature film. This perfectly camouflaged bird sitting on the rocks, surrounded by lovely miniature alpine wildflowers, was just fantastic. Finding a Brown-capped Rosy-Finch later that morning was icing on the cake.
The rest of our time in Rocky Mountain National Park provided many other great western/mountain species such as Northern Goshawk; Black Swift; Broad-tailed Hummingbird; Red-naped Sapsucker; Williamson’s Sapsucker; Hammond’s, Dusky, and Cordilleran flycatchers; Steller’s Jay; Clark’s Nutcracker; Violet-green Swallow; Mountain Chickadee; Pygmy Nuthatch; American Dipper (with babies!); Mountain Bluebird; Townsend’s Solitaire; Virginia’s and MacGillivray’s warblers; Western Tanager; Green-tailed Towhee; Pine Grosbeak; and Red Crossbill. It’s easy to see why this is such a popular trip! With the great group that we had and with all of our great successes, it will be a tough one to beat next year, but I can’t wait to try.