OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2000

We have all seen cases in which a general interest in birds has escalated, on some unknown cue, into a serious hobby, then eventually into a consuming avocation – complete with day, yard and state lists, low-dispersion optics, mornings in the park, the odd weekend at Montauk, etc. In fact, this is a familiar pattern that we come to expect. So how should we regard a progression along entirely different lines – for example, if the rash, edgy pursuit of an extreme sport were suddenly recast, without warning, as a Linnaean weekend trip?

It would be a memorable adventure, to judge by last spring’s Colorado Chicken Chase, in which seven unseasoned (though not entirely unsuspecting) Linnaean members were led on a 1,000-mile weekend juggernaut by Anthony Collerton and Philip Dempsey, retracing a fast-strike itinerary they had pioneered on the same weekend in 1999. This year’s saga began unassumingly enough in a crowded waiting lounge at La Guardia Airport on Friday evening, April 14, as we assembled for a late plane to Denver. In addition to Anthony and Philip, the entourage included Rick Cech, Mike Duffey, Ellen Hoffman, Ellen Kornhauser, Emily Peyton, Dorothy Poole and Sandra Reynolds.

After an uneventful flight, we piled into a 12-passenger rental van at the bracing hour of 10:30 p.m. and forged south toward Pueblo on I-25, paralleling the Front Range of the Rockies. For those unacquainted with Colorado geography, the "Front Range" is a string of north-south foothills that create a sharp dividing line between the Rocky Mountains, looming majestically to the West, and the flat, broad, short-grass prairies that extend eastward. (Not that we could appreciate either of these grandeurs in the dark of night, hurtling along the interstate.) We reached Pueblo at half past midnight. Stopping briefly, we depleted the munchies inventory of a local gas station deli -mart, like a visitation of army ants, then slipped quietly eastward into the night along Route 50, a desolate, rural highway. Anthony and Philip took turns at the wheel.

Overnight, with most of us dozing as best possible, the van passed through a series of small prairie towns along Route 50, each with a 35 mph speed limit, each crawling with patrol cars poised to snatch a bit of pass-through income. Towns like Fowler and Swink. If these were quaint mill towns along the river, they might touch-up their rawboned image with colorful village names, like Swink-upon-Avon. But they are in fact gritty outposts of Americana that exist mainly to support the nations’s appetite for animal protein. The penetrating, fecal ambience of the stockyards in one such town was sufficiently pungent to awaken nearly everyone in the van. A more telling name for the place, we thought, might be Swink-out-Loud.

After La Junta, we cleared the last fringes of habitation and began to see bits of nocturnal life, mostly mammals such as Striped Skunk, Black-tailed Jackrabbit, Desert Cottontail and Mule Deer. But also our first bird, a Common Poorwill startled up from the roadside to delight those few still awake. We picked through a series of dusty back roads toward the southeastern corner of the state. At 4:00 a.m.—already 313 miles into the trip—we arrived at the Comanche National Grasslands Lesser Prairie-Chicken Viewing Area. Quite a formidable name for this rather scraggy-looking patch of remnant short-grass prairie.

Our prairies, as often observed, are a sad shadow of their former selves, their fragile integrity being no match for the relentless incursion of farms, ranches, development and – more recently – alien grasses. Even our so-called "prairie preserves" often seem like giant feedlots, fenced, overgrazed, littered with pasture pies. Prairie habitats are particularly vulnerable to disturbance because they must already surmount harsh environmental challenges. The landscape is open and windswept and the winters frigidly cold. Hardpan, mineral spoils support only the hardiest of plant communities, and concentrated spring rains typically give way to searing summer drought, creating harsh, near desert conditions. Indeed, the term "Great American Desert" was coined by Stephen L. Long after an expedition to Colorado in the early 1800s. In all his life, Long never set foot in Arizona nor laid eyes on a Saguaro. But while they are tough and adaptable, our prairies are ecologically overwhelmed, and they are losing ground, slowly but steadily.

As dawn broke slowly around our van, nonetheless, it was still briefly possible to imagine how this place might have appeared two centuries ago, a near-limitless expanse of low xeric shrubs and tough grasses, draped at this hour in a thin, glinting dew. Along about 5:30, before it was light enough to see more than vague shadowy shapes out the van window, we began to discern the forms of Lesser Prairie-Chickens moving through the brush. Lekking males put on a highly acrobatic performance: strutting, erecting their display feathers, puffing the air sacs in their throat folds to create high-pitched, cackly vocalizations, occasionally somersaulting in mid-air like oversized manakins. We saw a half dozen or so males – not as close to the van as in 1999, but still easily observed. From time to time, a female would weave her way through the lek, attracting instant attention, like a true-life enactment of the swing dance sequence in the Broadway play Contact.

By 6:30 a.m. it was light enough to make out specific field marks on the prairie-chickens: light barring on the breast, magenta throat sacs, yellow cock’s-comb. We took turns in the van’s window seat, with a spotting scope rested on the door frame for better looks. Life ticks all around, except for Philip and Anthony. Also present at the lek were Brewer’s Blackbird, Cassin’s Sparrow and the ubiquitous Western Meadowlark.

We began to retrace our steps northwestward as the sun rose, making intermittent stops for prairie species along the way (although thick clouds and chilling wind kept activity subdued). A key attraction in this habitat is sparrows, and we found a good assortment: Chipping, Lark, Grasshopper, Vesper, Brewer’s, White-crowned, more Cassin’s and Lark Bunting. An abandoned roadside farmhouse provided trees and cover for Say’s Phoebe, Scaled Quail, Yellow-headed Blackbird, Curve-billed Thrasher and Loggerhead Shrike. Further down the rutted, dirt highway, Chihuahuan Raven, Horned Lark, Great-tailed Grackle,

Pronghorns, American Kestrel and American Robin (the only species seen numerously in all habitats and at all times throughout the trip).

After a quick pause at Campo for coffee and a pit stop (these respites were highly valued, being stingily allotted), we shifted our course due west to Cottonwood Canyon. This is an arid lowland traversed by a small but permanent-looking river. The river’s banks were lined by towering Cottonwoods. Our prize find here was a cooperative Lewis’ Woodpecker that sat for extended scope views. Also in the area, Black-billed Magpie, Western Scrub-Jay, Prairie Falcon, Canyon Towhee, Bewick’s Wren, Audubon’s Warbler, Red-shafted Flicker and Wood Duck (!). Driving out, we saw several Long-billed Curlews in plowed roadside fields, Red Fox, Thirteen-lined Ground Squirrel, and a handsome Ferruginous Hawk wheeling overhead, with its white underparts and rust-colored "leggins" in full view.

We arrived back just after noon at La Junta – which daylight revealed to be a ramshackle and depressed(ing) municipality. The Lake Cheraw Reservoir nearby was another matter. Permanent lakes on the prairie can have quite an astonishing variety of birds, and this was not an exception: highlights included Ross’ Goose (just one), American White Pelican, Western, Clark’s and Eared grebes, White-faced Ibis, both yellowlegs, Marbled Godwit, American Coot, Franklin’s and California gulls, plus a rich assortment of ducks, including Mallard, Green-winged Teal, Northern Pintail, American Wigeon, Bufflehead, Redhead, Northern Shoveler, etc.

Returning to the road, we passed through more grasslands, seeing Black-tailed Prairie-Dog colonies, a decent number of Swainson’s Hawks (dark, light and intermediate phases), one Cooper’s Hawk and an American Crow (actually a target bird on this trip, easily missed). Reaching the westernmost fringes of the short-grass prairie, we once again verified the stubborn fact that Sage Thrashers do not exist. Some continue to debate this point, suggesting that most of them merely linger in warmer territories to the south at this date, but we knew better and after a brief, ritual search we drove on.

In mid-afternoon, the landscape changed abruptly as we reached the eastern edge of the Front Range in Pueblo and continued west on Route 50. This transition zone between prairie and foothills attracts wintering Mountain Bluebirds, which were in good numbers. The elevated terrain in the southern part of the state is not composed of towering cirques and massifs, of the sort typically associated with the Colorado Rockies, but rather a series of rolling, red-rock/pinyon-juniper hills and low mountains, more reminiscent of Utah or New Mexico.

Amidst this interesting landscape sits Cañon City, an unreconstructed tourist trap. Also surely one of the world’s concentration points for criminal incarceration. The highway into town is dotted with correctional facilities maintained by different state and federal sentencing authorities, and there is even a prison museum in the town center (although the state’s retired gas chamber, formerly displayed on the front lawn, has been removed since my last visit in 1995).

We used what little remained of our mental energies to put the human landscape of Cañon City out of our minds. The balance of the late afternoon was spent exploring the dry canyon lands outside of town. Here our main quarry was Pinyon Jay, which travels in raucous flocks through patches of oak scrub and open, mixed-growth woodlands. Sometimes, anyway. We know that Pinyon Jays, unlike the Sage Thrasher, do exist, it was just that we could not find any. There were consolations in Temple Valley Canyon south of town, nonetheless, in particular an impressive concentration of Townsend’s Solitaires, at least a dozen, as well as an assortment of commoner pinyon-juniper residents, such as Mountain Chickadee, Common Bushtit and Pink-sided Junco; also a lone White-throated Swift overhead.

Phantom Canyon Road follows the path of an old railroad bed, built at the time of the silver rush (late 1800s) as a conduit to Cripple Creek. Though vaunted as a birding habitat, the narrow canyon roadsides were in fact severely overgrazed, leading to erosion and a general lack of protective cover for bird life. We stopped at one point next to a conifer stand that remained intact on a roadside slope. Dorothy Poole stayed in the van for a little shut-eye and Philip picked his way down the slope to look around. Along the road, one of the remaining group noticed an odd bird perched half way up a conifer (at eye level for us, as the tree was rooted on the hillside below). Unexpectedly, here was a Blue Grouse, a lifer for many. We were about to go rouse Dorothy when Philip walked up the slope directly below the tree, oblivious to the goings-on above him. The grouse startled and flew off to an inaccessible woodlot across the valley. "Blue Grouse!" Philip called brightly. "Yes, we know."

Abandoning our canyon tour, we started the last leg of our first day’s journey, a 45-mile drive west along Route 50 to Salida. The highway is narrow and twisty, following the narrow and twisty course of the Arkansas River. We had Common Merganser and Belted Kingfisher along the way. At a stone bridge near the end of the drive, Anthony pulled up suddenly and leapt from the van. It was after 8:00 p.m. now and the light was starting to fail. Nonetheless, it took Anthony only moments to locate a cooperative American Dipper, then another, in a small local colony they’d happened on last year. Although the birds were through fishing for the day and declined to "dip" below the river surface while we watched, it was still a magnificent way to end the day, a new species for many. Our sense of discovery and ownership was daunted only slightly by the fact that all of the dippers were banded, obviously under close scrutiny by observers more systematic than ourselves.

Seldom has a motel seemed as welcome as our modest lodging in Salida that night. Those who could still keep awake went for dinner at a local biker hangout, the Windmill. No bikers were on premises tonight, just as well. The steak was good, and the pillows back at the motel even better.

[To be continued.]