Colorado’s Western Slope is a land of big mountains, big open country, and big skies, and in spring it belongs to the grouse. This tour is built around their display. Over eight days you’ll work north from the high desert up into spruce forest and alpine meadow, and most mornings run the same way: up in the dark, out to a lek before first light, then the rest of the day for the birds around it. Four grouse are the thread through the week, three of them on the lek at dawn.

You’ll start in the sagebrush and pinyon-juniper of the high desert, home to Pinyon Jay, Clark’s Nutcracker, Juniper Titmouse, Sagebrush Sparrow, Sage Thrasher, and the rarest bird on the tour, the federally threatened Gunnison Sage-Grouse, on its lek. From there you climb. Along the rim of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison you’ll look for displaying Dusky Grouse and Canyon Wrens on the rock, and on top of Grand Mesa, in the spruce-fir forest, you’re after Canada Jay, American Three-toed Woodpecker, and, with luck, Northern Pygmy-Owl. Where streams cut through, willow and cottonwood add Lewis’s Woodpecker, and stands of pine hold Williamson’s Sapsucker.

The last stretch takes you to the far north of the state, to the sagebrush of North Park around Walden, for two more mornings in the dark. Here you’ll sit with lekking Sharp-tailed Grouse and then the iconic Greater Sage-Grouse, staying in the van and letting the birds strut close while Golden Eagles and Swainson’s Hawks hunt the open country. Then it’s east over the mountains to Denver, the four grouse of the week behind you.