Every once in awhile, life affords you the opportunity to witness a truly unique experience. With this in mind, we signed up for The Grouse Grand Slam offered by Bill Drummond of the Brookline Bird Club. The objective of this trip is to witness grouse and prairie chicken display on their Leks. At these leks, the males fight or more frequently display in order to attract females for mating. The display is both visual and audible with the males fanning their tail feathers and inflating their air sacs, which smack together to make a large thumping noise.
Witnessing this display frequently meant awakening, getting your gear together and being in position at the lek by 5:30 in the morning, which became increasingly more difficult to do with each passing day. In most instances as the sun appeared on the leks the birds had a tendency to fly off; making it quite difficult to take proper photos but leaving quite an impression and the feeling of being privileged to have witnessed this activity.
Traveling from Boston to Colorado in April proved to be a bit difficult with snow sweeping across the country, but as it turned out the entire party made it to Colorado Springs on time and ready to go. A not so quick drive through a snowstorm proved easier than I thought - we had Chris drive that leg of the trip; that made it pretty easy.
Highlights for the trip are near impossible to choose from - the first lek experience in Kansas for the Lesser Prairie Chicken, the photogenic Greater Sage Grouse display, FINALLY finding the White-tailed Ptarmigan on Loveland Pass, Linda's joy of finding the Dusky Grouse, watching Allison sketch away, the excitement of seeing new Life Birds. While it's difficult to choose, it is impossible to be wrong......
In all we totaled 125 species on the trip with 19 being life birds for Paul and 21 for Diana.
