I will post more details later with a link to photos. This is just a teaser. ?Frank Caruso and I returned yesterday afternoon ?from a 10 day trip to Colorado. ?We birded one day on our own with highlights being 500+ McCown's and 20+ Chestnut Collared Longspurs and a Mountain Plover. ?We then joined a tour with High Lonesome Bird Tours which focused on gallinaceous birds but produced many other great birds as well. ?143 species in all.
No we did not get nor try for Himalaya Snowcock but we did find all 13 of the other gallinaceous birds in Colorado including: 2 snow white White Tailed Ptarmigan, Chukar, Gambel's Quail, Northern Bobwhite, Scaled Quail, Turkey, Pheasant, Greater and Gunnison's Sage Grouse, Dusky Grouse, Sharp Tailed Grouse and both Greater and Lesser Prairie Chickens.
The Lesser Prairie Chicken is not doing well and there was only a single bird at the remote traditional lek providing a distant view of his dance. ?The Gunnison Sage Grouse were also distant but there were over 15 birds. ?On the other hand the Greater Sage Grouse and Greater Prairie Chickens were plentiful and we were very close with many photo ops. ?We watched then strut and dance and fight for many hours.
Will gladly provide det a it's offline.
And we were very fortunate to get back yesterday at all. ?After 80+ temperatures earler, a big winter storm blew in with more than 20 inches of snow in some of the areas we had visited. ?70% of the flights out of Denver were canceled. ? We were on an Alaska flight and had no trouble.
Picture link to follow later this week (I have 4000 photos to s ort through and edit).
Blair BernsonEdmonds
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