Summer in the high country of Colorado means cool and crisp mornings, warm and sunny afternoons, and baby birds galore. Oh, and moose. Our early August Reefs to Rockies trip to North Park provided all those things and more.
The three-day adventure began just west of Denver on a Friday morning, when guides Chip Clouse and Kyle Carlsen and a group of intrepid travelers climbed into a custom safari van dubbed the Roaming Bison and headed straight to the mountains. A stop in the tiny town of Empire gave us our first taste of Rocky Mountain birding, with gems like calliope and rufous hummingbirds, Steller’s jay, western tanager, and black-headed grosbeak, followed by Canada jay, Clark’s nutcracker, and Townsend’s solitaire at Berthoud Pass.
Reservoirs near Granby produced staggering numbers of ospreys, as well as a decent sampling of ducks and other water birds like American white pelicans. By early afternoon and after a delicious lunch and an obligatory stop for some Palisade peaches, we had reached the town of Walden in North Park, an intermountain glacial basin and our playground for the next two days.
Almost immediately we were welcomed by a cow moose and her calf standing at the edge of a meadow at Arapaho National Wildlife Refuge. We raised the pop-top of the van and spent the next few hours soaking in the landscape in true safari style. We had close views of multiple greater sage-grouse, several family groups of Swainson’s hawks, sage thrashers, mountain bluebirds, Brewer’s sparrows, lark sparrows, lark buntings, vesper sparrows… shall we go on? Mammalian highlights included the range-limited white-tailed prairie dog, Wyoming ground squirrel, and American pronghorn. So many pronghorns.
During our time at Arapaho National Wildlife Refuge we used multiple citizen science apps – eBird, Merlin, iNat, and Seek – as part of a volunteer project focused on environmental education through wildlife observation.
Evening brought nighthawks and dinner, and the next morning we returned to exploring and enjoying the area. North Park supports diverse wildlife habitats, including sagebrush steppe uplands, grassland meadows, willow riparian areas, and wetlands. In other words, there was a lot to see (and eBird and iNat). A young peregrine falcon delighted us with several close flybys. We added prairie falcon shortly after. Two soras out in the open. More sage-grouse. Yellow-headed blackbirds. Mule deer. An array of wildflowers. And American badger!
Our time at Walden Reservoir proved just as fruitful with loads of eared and western grebes with babies on backs, rafts of ducks of several species, phalaropes, avocets, coots, cormorants, pelicans, gulls, terns, herons, and ibises. The sheer numbers of water birds on and around this reservoir at this time of year is mesmerizing. Black terns still in breeding plumage treated us with considerably close views.
The last morning of the trip brought two big highlights: a bull moose grazing in the willows right next to our van, and a golden eagle, a bird that had eluded us until now. Our route back to Denver took us to Cameron Pass and down through Poudre Canyon, and we picked up a few more montane species and had a serendipitous encounter with a Lewis’s woodpecker.
Pleasant weather, good company, and lots of birds and other wildlife made this a memorable tour through north-central Colorado. We cannot wait to do it again in August 2025!
