Birding for Chickens

I'm sure you have figured out by now, I bird fairly close to home. Money is an issue; $30-40 to even drive up and bird around Pueblo is rough for me. No problem though...I live in a pretty birdy area. The reason I'm not real wild about birding alone is that I really don't know what to look for. It occurred to me, while observing a particularly dark-streaked Pine Siskin that...I could easily make it a Black & White Warbler. Sheeshhhhhhhhhhhhh.

However...I have good friends who sometimes pick me up when they go out birding. Polly and Paul Neldner are just such folks and live just across town from me. We like to share birds, stories and folks who visit. When folks come to my yard to bird (and there are quite a few), they let me trundle them over to their place about a mile away...to see different birds in their different habitat. They get Pinyon Jays and Spotted Towhees, I get Rosy Finches...but never visa-versa.

Well, except for Charlie; my Lewis's Woodpecker who spent the winter in my yard and somehow has ended up in theirs! Yup, he's now in their yard every day...and they don't even feed him kibble. Harrummph!

These two neighbors of mine get to travel a bit and always include bird-watching when they take trips. Recently they were off on a chicken-hunt of sorts...I've never seen the chicken-types strut. I know the gist of it and used to find dusty spots up near my (then) cabin where wild turkeys danced and left both foot-prints and parallel marks where they drug their wings and fanned their tails for the ladies. But I've never seen them at it.

Polly and Paul have now seen it, but didn't get good pictures of the Dusky Grouse strutting and showing off, so when Paul happened upon a pair in Cuchara (about 10 miles up the mountain from La Veta), he started taking a camera to work; and he got some stunning shots.

Today, the two of them picked me up for the ride to try to break Polly's Bad-Grouse-Karma; hoping she'd get to see the pair displaying too. We did...and it was awesome. The female is a quite bird, in color and disposition; larger than I expected. Yes, very chicken-like and with big, feathered feet. The male was stunning; a pineapple-butt (from the back), startling yellow eye-combs and bright, raspberry-colored neckticles...I mean air-sacks (well, they do look a lot like something else...and only the guys gots 'em. ...thanks Polly! heh, heh, heh)

Anyway, the bird sort of gulps air and fluffs out, spreads his tail and 'booms'...an eerie and sort of prehistoric sound. It's a single burp (or whatever makes the sound)...of a peculiar wave length; it's wild. And I got to hear it several times!

On the way back, we stopped frequently to check birdy bushes, trees and ponds, and at one place spotted a beautiful Red-naped Sapsucker up-close and personal. What fun...

Perhaps I should offer this disclaimer...while this is a Red-naped Sapsucker, and the photo was taken by the Neldners, it is not the specific bird we saw. This is another shot they got some time ago...not all that far from where we were.

I appreciate my good friends & neighbors and they let me use their photographs! All pictures in this post belong to Paul & Polly Neldner. To see more of their beautiful shots, go to Colorado Birder, here. As always, click a pic to enlarge.

Oh, they both shoot and don't really care who took which photo between them;
hence the P & P. ...Sweet!