Ptarmigan on Grey's Peak

I have been sick all weekend with a particularly nasty, lingering sinus infection.  I'm trying to get into the habit of updating since it seems like a few people are actually reading this.  I thought I'd write about one of the birds that sparked my interest in birding several years ago.  This occurred before I even owned a point-and-shoot camera, so I have no pictures.


I had gotten a weekday off and had made a commitment that I have not followed through on to climb a fourteener every month.  Living in Colorado Springs I see one every day, you would have thought it would have been an easy commitment with such a grand reminder.  I will only climb on weekdays unless those days are holidays and then I won't climb at all.  There are just too many people on all of the big mountains to make it a true escape from daily life.  The high mountains in summer are a spectacular place.  Grey's and Torrey in particular.  They are in between Denver and Breckenridge in the Front Range and receive quite a bit of snowfall.  Grey's itself has many small streams and creeks that must be forded and a cold mini-marsh on the backside.  All of the water leads to a lot of plants.  Short spiky tundra grass as far as the eye can see with brilliant high altitude flowers rising just above the grass in crimson red, vermillion orange, royal purple, and pure white.  There are woody plants too, perhaps some type of rose.  The high mountains are a place of miniatures when it comes to plants.  Nothing grows exceptionally tall or wide, just brilliant in colour and complexity.  The morning that I climbed a thick fog bank had rolled in from the west which only made the place more magical.  Dew drops hung on every surface like diamonds and the deeper, dark colours of earth, snow, rock, and lichen were exaggerated.  The jeep trail to the launch point that I had selected; I had decided to climb them in reverse order to make finding the trail head marker easier, was a rough washed out affair.  I was glad to be in my Jeep Grand which handled the rocky trail up to a deep water crossing.  And so I hiked the last few miles of the jeep trail.  There was a large tree that had been felled and was a capable bridge across the cold and swiftly flowing stream.  After this stream you hit tree-line and the surrounding forest of mixed aspens, lodge-pole, and ponderosa give way to the tundra.  There's a small pond of crystal clear, blue water up on a shoulder of rock that stands over the valley at the beginning of the real climb up to Grey's.  I was heading there first to see the pond and eat a bit of breakfast before the scramble up the monstrous scree field.  The hike through the valley isn't long, about two miles I think, probably less.  The sun came out and burned through the fog and as I approached the rocks that lead to the pond the temperature had climbed and the fog was completely gone.  The approach to the pond is a little steep and it twists through the outcropping until you're on the ponds bank.  As I came around the first turn I heard a soft, cooing call.  I knew that there weren't supposed to be any birds up here so I ignored it and kept going without reducing my speed or the amount of noise I was making.  The second little curve gave way to two chunky birds.  About the size of scaled quail; they were white overlaid with brown streaks and stripes and feathered all the way down the legs.  The smaller bird was a more even, darker and more defined striped pattern.  The only place without patterning was the tip of the folded wing, the median coverts.  The larger bird had a red line over each eye, a more even and muted light brown on his back and streaks down his breast, his belly and flanks were solidly white.  I had no idea what kind of birds these were, at the time I kept chickens in my back pasture and had raised turkeys.  I foolishly assumed they were flightless and must reside in the high country year round.  Of course, they do, but they are not flightless.  These were white-tailed ptarmigan as I'd later find out.  I sat and watched them for about a half hour before I finished the climb, which was fairly normal, just a few mountain goats standing on the continental divide which is visible from the flanks of Grey's Peak.  I stopped at a Borders book store (when they still existed) in Denver on my home.  I searched for bird books and found a thick Smithsonian DK guide with photographs.  I found the bird and bought the book.