Today, Braden shares the latest installment of his series counting down the remaining ABA Life Birds he has been attempting to see. It’s just like listening to Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 Countdown—but better, because it’s about BIRDS! To catch up on his other recent life bird adventures, click on these previous posts:

Black-chinned Sparrow: Bird #14 on Braden’s ABA Life List Countdown

Fulvous Whistling-Duck: Bird #15 on Braden’s ABA Life List Countdown

Lower 48 Life List Countdown: Crissal Thrasher (Bird #16)

The sun still hadn’t woken up when I pulled over behind the half dozen or so other cars parked along the side of the road. I rolled down my window as a local game biologist approached.

“Are you here for the grouse?”

“Yes,” I answered quietly as a Horned Lark began singing somewhere in the darkness.

“And where are you from?”

“Montana, though I’m en route from California.”

She marked a few things off on her clipboard, then returned to her car. Through the gray pre-dawn darkness, I could make out a huge field of sagebrush, the foreground for Ponderosa-covered hills rising in the distance. In other words, my car was parked on a dirt road surrounded by a typical landscape of the American West. Even the birds were similar to those found in Montana: a winnowing Wilson’s Snipe, calling Red-winged Blackbirds, the husky chirps of a singing Mountain Bluebird. And yet, in Gunnison County, Colorado, there lives a bird that has never lived in Montana. Me and the other birders, silhouetted through their car windows, had driven from various corners of the country to see it: The Gunnison Sage-grouse.

Superficially, Gunnison Sage-grouse and Greater Sage-grouse aren’t all that different. Both species require expansive sagebrush habitats like the plain that stretched out before me in the rising light. The Greater is larger (hence the name), and, during the breeding season, Gunnisons have much longer filoplumes adorning the males’ heads. While Greater Sage-grouse are found across much of the West, Gunnisons occupy only a small area in Colorado and western Utah. The ranges of the two birds do not overlap.

Sage-grouse breeding displays are some of North America’s most famous avian experiences. Males and females gather in breeding groups in early spring. Both the breeding groups and their display grounds are commonly referred to as leks. While lekking, the males, decked out in the most ridiculous plumage of any North American bird, pump their chests to the viewing amusement of nearby females. Although I’d seen Greater Sage-grouse a few times in my life, I’d never been able to experience one of these leks. And while there are several sites across the country where one might watch a Greater Sage-grouse lek, there is only a single public Gunnison Sage-grouse lek, a spot about fifteen miles east of Waunita Watchable Wildlife Area. Because of their small population and increasing threats to the habitats they’re found in, the grouse are endangered, and so the public lek is open for viewing only during certain weeks of the year. I had arrived on April 10th, the last day the lek would be open for another two weeks.

About half an hour before dawn, another birder’s car alarm went off. I could see everyone in their cars wince—Gunnison Sage-grouse are quite sensitive to disturbance, and this could have been enough to send them scampering away. Thankfully, the birds (which were about ¾ of a mile away from the road), didn’t seem bothered, and about ten minutes later, I began to hear the popping sounds of their displays. I eventually located them, distant black dots, even through my binoculars. Fifteen minutes later, with the permission of the biologist, we started getting out of our cars to set up spotting scopes.

Through the scope my viewing experience was marginally better. I could make out the males, with their furry white chests and black heads, pumping their shoulders at each other. Occasionally, a female would scamper through my view. Though far away, lekking sage-grouse had been on my bucket list for years and taking them in as the sun peeked above the horizon could only be described as a magical experience. Fog escaped my lips every time I took a breath, and a few nearby Sage Thrashers began singing across the road from us. Soon my fellow birders were beginning to whisper to each other, and I learned just how far people had come to see these birds. The man in the car whose alarm had gone off had driven through the night from Oregon en route to a bird point-count job in Oklahoma, stopping here just for this species. Another man had come here from a few hours away. 

“My kid loves it, birding,” he said to me. “The last year especially, he’s really gotten into it. He wanted to see these grouse, so here we are.” I couldn’t help but see the similarities between that father and son and my birding experiences with my own dad.

After about four minutes of the grouse lekking, a group of birders stormed out of the blind that was set up beside the cars. I’d run into this group last night and learned they were doing a “chicken run.” Colorado is known for having almost every grouse species in the US and tour groups often target all of them during weeks in March and April. One of the birders asked if I knew any nearby spots for White-tailed Ptarmigan before the four of them noisily piled into their car and drove away. So much for staying quiet while the grouse were displaying! Either way, the birds didn’t seem to mind.

Beyond seeing these endangered birds, I had been enjoying seeing more and more landscapes that reminded me of home as I neared the middle of my road trip back to Montana. On my drives through Arizona and Colorado I watched the desert transition into mountainous valleys, complete with juniper and sagebrush-covered canyons, rushing streams with permanent water, and the snowcapped peaks of the San Juans and other mountain ranges. Of course, my trip was nowhere near over. I’d be visiting several more new habitats before that happened. In fact, one of those habitats would be later in the day, where I might just manage to see another life bird! Stay tuned to see what comes next . . .