Colorado: Lekking Grouse

April is a spectacular time of year in Colorado. Late winter and early spring combine stunningly beautiful snowcapped peaks with the first blush of green on the river-edge cottonwoods and prairies. It’s also the time when the five lekking grouse species—Sharp-tailed Grouse, Greater and Gunnison Sage-Grouse, and Lesser and Greater Prairie-Chickens—are engaged in their amazing foot-stomping, cackling, hooting, and/or moaning displays.

Our travels to the grouse leks involve long drives, but what drives! We’ll travel along the Colorado River and the magnificent Black Canyon of the Gunnison, through montane spruce-fir forests and expansive sagebrush flats and grasslands, and past more than a dozen 14,000-foot mountain peaks. Along the way we’ll look for a variety of resident, early-arriving, or late-departing species, including White-tailed Ptarmigan, Dusky Grouse, and all three species of rosy-finch. Mammals will be unusually well represented too: we may see Bighorn Sheep, Pronghorn, Elk, White-tailed and Mule Deer, Moose, Coyote, Red Fox, and, with great luck, Bobcat or even Mountain Lion.