Multi-State Road Trip Summary Mostly North Dakota, Wyoming and Colorado, some Minnesota; travel through Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota & Montana
Stuart Healy June 1-28, 2009; with Steve & Jessica Sherwood June 7, 9 & 11; with David Patick, June 13-23
Trip Log (journal entries)	Trip Species List	Trip Photo List(links)

By using the links above, you can find day to day details of the trip (in my journal); see the the overall trip list; and view the bird photos that I took from the links in the photo list. Comments and questions welcome.

This was my annual June escape from Arizona, albeit a little different this year since it included working with clients for the first time. From June 1 through June 28, I traveled 9650 miles through 12 states. Breaking down the 28 days on the road: 14 with two separate clients (11 and 3); 2 travel no birding; 3 travel with some birding; the remaining 9 days were used for scouting and personal birding. Most of the birding was done in North Dakota (7 full, 5 partial days), Colorado (6 full, 4 partial days), Wyoming (2 full, 4 partial days) and Minnesota (2 full, 2 partial days).

I recorded a total of 227 species (see the Trip Species List for a complete list and breakdown by state). Note that a disproportionate amount of time was spent looking for relatively few species (including time consuming gallinaceous species) and many more species could be seen on such a trip if that were the main objective. Colorado is very close to my least favorite state so from a personal viewpoint I spent way too much time there. Wyoming is my favorite state and it got short shrift on this trip. Balancing vacation and work is tricky and I certainly didn't strike the right balance on my first attempt.

Personal highlights for me were my time on the Beartooth Highway (even if it was short and marred by heavy clouds) and the days that I spent at the end of the trip in the Medicine Bow Mountains west of Laramie. In terms of birds, Pine Grosbeak and Black Rosy-Finch in Wyoming and many Red-Necked Grebes in the Turtle Mountains of ND come out on top. Nelson's Sharp-tailed Sparrow and Bobolink are not far behind. However, I derived the most satisfaction from finding White-tailed Ptarmigan after several attempts under difficult weather conditions. I added to my state lists for 5 of the 12 states that I visited or traveled through (CO, KS, MN, OK & WY) and I picked up two new species photographed (Barrow's Goldeneye and Nelson's Sharp-tailed Sparrow) to bring my total to 519.

Weather
Taking the entire trip into account, I enjoyed generally good weather and didn't see any really hot days (which, after all, is the main reason I get out of AZ in June). The first couple of weeks spent mostly in North Dakota were at least partly wet on most days. Inclement weather was a problem on a few days and ran the gamut from heavy rain, sleet, a little snow and high winds. However, it was really only the wind at high elevation that had any serious impact on birding.

Summary of target birding with David Patick June 13-23 (go to journal)
This was my 5th time working with David Patick from Huntington, WV. When I planned this trip back in September of last year, I identified 22 potential target species including a few owls that are better looked for elsewhere. In the end we looked for the following 19 hard targets, mostly comprised of 7 gallinaceous and 5 grassland species. We traveled 4000 miles starting from Fargo airport at midday on June 13 and ending at Denver airport late afternoon on June 23.

The overall timing of the trip was predicated on making sure that Black Swift would be seen on a nest at the back end of the trip. See the journal entry for June 20 for more on this. At the same time, I wanted to make sure that the grassland birds would still be vocal and active at the beginning of the trip. Some of the gallinaceous birds are best seen on leks earlier in the year so that ship had sailed and we were in for a tough time no matter what the date was.

My former life as an engineer ensures that I'm a data freak and I routinely collect, analyze and put my birding data to good use when planning trips. I assigned each species a code of 1 to 5 based on my own experiences (in June, of course). Values reflect a combination of a species' status and the time factor required to find it. I expected to find all of the 1 and 2 species (1 without much difficulty, 2 with more time and effort). I figured that we had a 50% chance of the 3 species, a  low chance for 4 and very low chance for 5. As you can see, overall we did very well with 17 species seen, 1 heard only (Chukar) and 1 missed (Greater Sage-Grouse). I estimated that our "efficiency factor" would be 1.2 birds per day and we ended up with 1.5 (17 targets seen in 11 days).

Looking beyond the numbers
While my approach to planning is good for determining where to go for each species, how much time to allocate and the likely success factor, there are many more factors that come into play "on the ground". Logistics for this trip were very difficult and we changed things on-the-fly almost on a daily basis after the first couple of days. Distance between birds and the need to be on site early morning were the biggest issues. For some birds (such as Barrow's Goldeneye or Black Swift on a nest) it doesn't much matter what time of day you look for them. Conversely, looking for grouse is best done early morning or late evening. On some days we only had one main target with a secondary target at a compromised time.

Weather conditions can make or break any birding trip. Overall we had fairly decent weather but our high elevation birding was certainly plagued by high winds. Although the windy conditions didn't cause us to fail, we certainly expended lots of time and effort before finding Ptarmigan and Brown-capped Rosy-Finch. There were a couple of birds that turned out to be "a bridge too far". Chukar (3 tries, heard twice) and Greater Sage-Grouse (5 tries, not a sniff) fell into this category.

Local knowledge also plays a part and we made good use of information from birders in each state. They are acknowledged in the relevant journal entries. Without their info we probably would not have been successful with Gunnison Sage-Grouse, Greater Prairie-Chicken and Gray Partridge.