Colorado towns promote wildlife-watching

WALDEN, Colo. — People jostled cameras and squirmed on benches inside a trailer on a high-mountain meadow as the tour guide gently opened retractable doors, turning the bird blind into a window on one of nature's most spectacular shows: Strutting, chest-puffing male sage grouse in the last throes of mating season.

Dozens of greater sage grouse were first heard in the 5 a.m. darkness: Swishing sounds followed by pops, like a loud percolating coffee pot.

Light gradually spread over the meadow, brightening the jagged, snowcapped peaks of the Mount Zirkel Wilderness and revealing the source of the sounds — two big white air sacs on the birds' chests that repeatedly inflate and deflate. The brown and black birds, about 2 feet tall, fanned out their spiked tail feathers, trying to attract the two or three hens checking them out and charging at the other eager males.

The prancing stopped an hour later when a golden eagle looking for food swooped down and the grouse flew away in one bunch.

The abrupt end didn't disappoint visitors who drove 100 miles or more to get to Walden, a town of nearly 700 in north-central Colorado.

"That's quite a show. I was really impressed," said George Oetzel, a semiretired engineer from Boulder.

Oetzel has traveled to Australia and Costa Rica to see exotic wildlife, but he'd never seen the greater sage grouse, the largest of chickenlike birds on the Great Plains and rolling, sagebrush-dotted hills of the West. "I think there's a good chance we'll go again next year," he said.

Like other towns in Colorado and the West, Walden is trying to capitalize on what's in its own backyard by offering sage grouse tours.

Monte Vista in south-central Colorado has a March celebration when thousands of sandhill cranes drop by the San Luis Valley on their northern migration. Wray, on the state's eastern plains, draws visitors from across the country in late March to watch prairie chickens go through their mating ritual.

Communities often team up with state and federal wildlife agencies and involve local residents and businesses to put on the festivals. In Wray, the town museum hosts a program, and ranchers allow groups onto their land to see the prairie chickens' lek, or mating ground.

The Colorado Division of Wildlife has worked with other state agencies, landowners and wildlife groups to create a Web site about the Colorado Birding Trail, which grew out of development of a birding trail in southeast Colorado but has expanded with information on wildlife watching tips statewide.