Beyond the Checklist: Inside Colorado’s Grouse Leks with VENT Leader Kevin Burke
A field guide can tell you how to separate a Greater Prairie-Chicken from a Lesser Prairie-Chicken. It can describe the pointed tail of a Gunnison Sage-Grouse, map the restricted range of a Brown-capped Rosy-Finch, or explain the courtship behavior of a Sharp-tailed Grouse.
What it cannot tell you is what it feels like when dozens of grouse begin dancing around you before sunrise.
That distinction is at the heart of VENT’s Colorado Grouse tour, which Kevin will lead in 2027 alongside fellow birding guide Mollee Brown.
“You can see someone’s pictures from the Grand Canyon and think, ‘That looks beautiful,’” says VENT leader Kevin Burke. “But then you go and you’re actually standing there looking at it. It’s completely different. The grouse experience is like that. You have to be in that moment.”
When the Lek Comes Alive
A lek is a traditional display ground where male grouse gather during the breeding season. And “gather” hardly describes what happens next.
Depending on the species, males stomp their feet, inflate colorful air sacs, raise specialized feathers, leap into the air, boom, dance, spar, and posture. Females move through the lek evaluating prospective mates, often triggering a dramatic increase in activity among the males.
For Kevin, Sharp-tailed Grouse may put on the most entertaining performance of all.
“They are so animated when they dance,” he says. “They stomp their feet and make these little noises. They’ll get head-to-head with each other, and then a female walks through and all the males suddenly go crazy. The intensity completely changes.”
It is one thing to know that behavior occurs. It is another to be close enough to hear it.
At several of the leks visited on the Colorado tour, the birds can be remarkably near the group. Sharp-tailed Grouse and Greater Prairie-Chickens have even landed on the vehicles.
“You can hear the pitter-patter of their feet on the roof,” Kevin says.
At that distance, experienced birders can move beyond identification and begin concentrating on individual birds: which males hold particular territories, how neighboring males respond to one another, what happens when a female enters the lek, and how quickly the dynamics change.
That, Kevin says, is where the experience becomes especially interesting.
Greater, Lesser — and Something in Between
One of the most revealing encounters on the 2026 tour came at a Lesser Prairie-Chicken lek.
The group did not encounter Lesser Prairie-Chickens alone.
Greater Prairie-Chickens were displaying nearby—and so was a hybrid.
For serious birders, the opportunity created an unusual natural comparison.
“The differences between Greater and Lesser Prairie-Chickens can be pretty subtle,” Kevin explains. “But when they're there together, you can hear the differences in their vocalizations.”
The two species largely remained within their own portions of the lek. The hybrid was another story.
“The Greaters were over here and the Lessers were over there,” Kevin recalls. “The hybrid went back and forth between both of them and was displaying.”
It was the kind of observation that turns identification knowledge into a much richer understanding of the birds themselves.
A Bird That Demands Distance
Not every lek provides such intimate viewing.
Gunnison Sage-Grouse presents a very different experience—and an important lesson in responsible birding.
The species has an extremely restricted range, centered primarily around the Gunnison Basin, with additional populations elsewhere in southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah. Kevin describes the birds as particularly sensitive to human disturbance.
As a result, the viewing experience is deliberately distant.
The group watches from an established blind, and the displaying grouse may be roughly three-quarters of a mile away.
“You can see them, and you can see the differences,” Kevin says, “but they're much farther away than the birds at the other leks.”
That distance is part of the experience rather than an inconvenience to overcome.
For Kevin, seeing the Gunnison Sage-Grouse reinforces something equally important: remarkable wildlife encounters depend on respecting the needs of the wildlife.
Access Built Over Decades
One of the less obvious challenges of trying to assemble a Colorado grouse itinerary independently is access.
Many of the most productive lekking grounds occur on private ranches.
VENT has cultivated long-standing relationships with landowners, ranchers, and wildlife professionals that allow groups to visit places most travelers could not simply drive up to on their own.
At one property, Kevin describes traveling miles into a roughly 100,000-acre ranch through multiple gates before reaching the lek. The landowner actively manages habitat for prairie-chickens and has numerous leks across the property.
Other relationships provide access to Sharp-tailed Grouse and Lesser Prairie-Chicken sites.
“These are long-standing relationships,” Kevin says. “These landowners manage for these birds.”
The relationship sometimes extends well beyond the transaction of accessing private land. One rancher, Kevin says, asks VENT to make a contribution to a local school arts and music program in lieu of a traditional access fee.
For travelers, those relationships translate into something difficult to capture on an itinerary: the opportunity to experience carefully managed places with people who have spent years understanding both the landscape and the birds.
Searching for a White Bird in a White World
Not all of Colorado’s memorable grouse-family birds come to a lek.
The tour also climbs to nearly 12,000 feet at Loveland Pass in search of White-tailed Ptarmigan.
In spring, that presents an obvious problem.
The landscape may still be almost completely covered in snow.
So is the bird.
“You're standing in this completely white landscape looking for a completely white bird with two little black eyes,” Kevin says.
On the 2026 tour, Kevin was searching alongside the group when the unexpected happened.
A White-tailed Ptarmigan flew into the area beside them.
It was Kevin’s first.
“I got my lifer on that trip,” he says. “It flew in right next to us and started calling. Then it walked within about ten feet of the group. Everybody was flipping out.”
Leaders farther down the road received a slightly more urgent radio message than usual.
“Get up here. Now.”
And Then There Was the Dusky Grouse
Another unforgettable 2026 encounter came almost entirely by chance.
The group had spent considerable time searching unsuccessfully for Dusky Grouse before deciding to explore a road they normally did not travel in Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.
In a small clearing, there it was.
A male Dusky Grouse began displaying.
Rather than disappearing into the forest, it continued for roughly half an hour, eventually approaching the vehicles and even charging toward one of them.
The group remained inside and watched.
Those are the moments Kevin believes define this trip as much as successfully finding the target species.
“It’s all about watching them,” he says.
Beyond the Grouse
It would be easy to think of Colorado Grouse as a five-species quest. The reality is considerably richer.
The changing elevations and habitats can produce a remarkable collection of western specialties.
At high elevation, the tour searches for White-tailed Ptarmigan and all three North American rosy-finches: Gray-crowned, Black, and Brown-capped Rosy-Finches. Elsewhere, possibilities include Pinyon Jay, Mountain Chickadee, Golden Eagle, and numerous other birds of the Rockies, sagebrush, and western plains.
Kevin is particularly enthusiastic about the rosy-finches.
“You can get into neighborhoods where there are hundreds of them coming into feeders,” he says. “They're big targets and crowd favorites.”
Mammals add yet another dimension, with the possibility of prairie dogs, ground squirrels, Moose, Elk, Mule Deer, and other western species along the route.
A Demanding Journey—and Part of the Reward
Kevin is equally candid about what Colorado Grouse is not.
It is not a leisurely lodge-based birding vacation.
The itinerary covers roughly 2,500 miles, changes hotels frequently, and includes very early mornings. On some days, the group may leave around 4:00 a.m. to reach a lek before the birds begin displaying.
There may be several hours in a blind before returning for breakfast, packing up, and continuing across Colorado.
“It’s go, go, go,” Kevin says.
The physical hiking demands may not be extreme, but the pace, driving, early mornings, and constant movement make it a rigorous journey.
And yet Kevin has repeatedly seen those conditions create something unexpected.
Camaraderie.
“Once you get into the groove and you see those prairie-chickens dancing and all these other leks, everybody is experiencing this historic dance happening around them,” he says. “It creates a lot of camaraderie within the group.”
Stop Looking. Start Watching.
Near the end of our conversation, Kevin was asked a different kind of question:
What do you learn when you stop looking for grouse and simply start watching them?
His answer moved beyond field marks and life lists.
“You learn something new every time,” he says. “For me, it can be kind of spiritual. It reaffirms why I've been doing this and why I love it.”
There are the birds, certainly.
But there are also landscapes crossed before dawn, generations-old display grounds, ranchers who protect them, fellow travelers who understand why waking at 4:00 a.m. is worth it, and the unexpected bird that suddenly walks ten feet from the group.
Perhaps that is why Kevin keeps returning to his Grand Canyon analogy.
Some experiences lose something fundamental when reduced to a photograph, a checklist, or even a description.
Colorado’s grouse leks are among them.
“You have to be in the moment,” Kevin says. “You have to be there.”