Sketching Our Way Through Colorado

This trip had always been billed as one where you freeze. You have to get to the leks about an hour before the birds do, then sit there, quietly, while the weather does whatever it’s going to do. (I quickly learned to snag the motel bedspreads to wrap up in for this long wait, the famous Heure Bleue, the time of day when most deaths happen, when the edge of day and night is as sharp as the frost on the windshield, inside.)

And then you hear them, long before you can see anything. In the case of the greater prairie-chicken, here on the right, what you hear is a three-interval boom, not unlike the golden-crown sparrow’s in pitch, but very different in timbre. (Think descant recorder duo versus cello.)

The trick now is to get your hands to work well enough to wield a pen. I made a huge number of sketches in the dark, trying just to capture the essence of these birds. I’d try to work the sketches up quickly at breakfast before we had to saddle up again. You have to work fast and there’s no time for detail…

It was easiest for the greater sage-grouse, since they were so close to the car. We could hear their feet on the ground outside the window. We could hear the intake of air as they filled their sacs, knocking them together in an audible Dolly Parton parody. And as the sun grew closer to rising, we could see the filoplumes on each male’s head, rising and falling with the dance.

Our tripmates mostly had small digital cameras, which they wielded to greater or lesser success through scopes or binoculars. (Our ptarmigan victory salute, for instance, can be seen here ). Paul had a good digital SLR; I’ll look forward to seeing some of his shots. But to learn the bird, learn its lines, its feathers, its stance, its essence, I’d rather sketch: these birds are now etched into my head.