As we get ready this week to leave for our annual road trip to Colorado I keep thinking of our birding adventure at Pawnee National Grassland last summer. Even though it wasn’t peak bird watching season, it turned out to be spectacular day of bird, wildlife and insect watching.
You have to be willing to get up before “early” to get the most out of the Pawnee National Grassland in Colorado. The area is known for its birding. The birds are up and at ’em at the crack of dawn so we needed to be up and on the road before the birds. Ugh. Last July we were on the road to the Crow Valley Recreation Area by 4:30 a.m. and we still arrived pretty late by birding standards. Here’s why I’ll be happy to return one day.
1. The windy, dry landscape with its gorgeous horizon line made me feel like I left society behind or dusty cowboy could ride up on his horse at any moment.
2. Birds galore. My parents are serious birders. They were prepared with bird books and binoculars. I just showed up hoping to see something, anything, with the naked eye (is there something lower than ‘amateur birder’? That’s me). It turns out we were all happy. Some of the birds we saw included a nighthawk, mourning doves, western kingbird, burrowing owl, red-tailed hawk and Colorado’s state bird, the lark bunting. I’m sure my parents and brother probably saw oodles more than I did sitting in the “far back” seat of the van.
3. Wildlife. This is what I really enjoyed looking for. Mule deer, pronghorn, cattle and prairie dogs broke up the flat, flat grasslands now and then. Sadly for P we didn’t see any rattlesnakes.
4. Windmills and oil rigs. They’re all over the place! Probably to locals they’re as interesting as silos are to us in Wisconsin, but they fascinate me. And they look like they’re right out of an old movie.
5. Insects and plants. I spotted beetles, ants, enormous dragonflies, cactus (cacti?), tumbleweed, prairie flowers and yucca without even looking for anything. I can’t imagine how much more there is under the surface. At several stops we simply sat and watched the insect activity.
6. Contrasts. Texture, sunlight, shadows. It’s a feast for the senses.
7. Cattle. There are many islands of private land throughout the Pawnee Grasslands and lots of cattle because it’s open range. At least once a group of them were parked in the middle of the road. It was somewhat startling to be at the mercy of cattle that wouldn’t move off the road (they finally sauntered off).
8. It is a place of contradictions. The area is open to target shooting and is an open range for cattle. Bird & gun enthusiasts, oil rigs and pronghorns all hare the same land for wildly different purposes.
9. History. The history of places makes them more interesting to me. A place’s story gives me context. There wasn’t a lot of historical information, but I liked that there was some background on the people and land from the Arapaho and Cheyenne to trappers and traders to cattle barons, settlement and land management.
10. Pawnee National Grassland is kid friendly for school-age children and up. there’s lots to see and learn about animals and birds. It was especially excellent for my 7-year-old collector. P spent most of his time collecting rocks and a great variety of gun shells. As soon as the car came to a stop he jumped out of the car and started looking for rocks and gun shells (there are tons of empty gun shells) while the rest of us looked for birds. That day on the way home he said happily, “Every one of these rocks is pure gold to me.”
Things to consider
- Lots of driving and stopping which means putting your seatbelt on over and over and over again.
- Bring binoculars. I didn’t have any and I was still thoroughly entertained, but it was pretty cool to see the birds even better through a borrowed pair now and then.
- Bring water and a lunch or snacks. There are no gas stations, no stores, no nothing.
- There aren’t any bathrooms, not even a pit toilet, after the first stop on the loop. See # 3.
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