We left our room in Estes Park as daylight began, not wanting to leave too early and to reduce encounters with large animals on the road. We did reach the alpine area along Trail Ridge Road in the National Park a bit before six, and began birding the Medicine Bow Curve right at 6. Our targets were the White-tailed Ptarmigan and the Brown-capped Rosy-Finch. Wisdom is the Medicine Bow Curve is just about the best place to see ptarmigan anywhere.

As I climbed out of the car, a rosy-finch began calling in our immediate vicinity. However, we never saw it, and furthermore didn’t hear it again at this location.

We then spent the next two hours carefully walking up the trail from the parking lot about a half-mile and then back. The plumage of the ptarmigans make it almost impossible to pick them out from the rocks in the alpine so to see one can require careful observation of your surroundings. The whole time we enjoyed watching the aerial display of the American Pipits along with their songs. The pipit’s individual notes can almost sound like a rosy-finch so we took special note of them.

I had reached that point in my mind where I was ready to admit failure one more time. It was one I knew well after not seeing ptarmigan on many occasions at Mt. Rainier, Mt. Baker, the Washington North Cascades, and Jasper National Park in Alberta. And then, almost back to the car, THERE THEY ARE! a pair feeding on flies emerging from the alpine tundra.

We stood almost perfectly still while the male worked around us keeping his distance. However, the hen walked up to within a couple feet of me continuing to feed on the flies while in my shadow. I must draw flies.

After a brief time, we continued back to the car and informed two other groups of birders just beginning up the trail that the ptarmigan were perhaps only a couple hundred yards up the trail. One of the groups were led by a man who knew those individual ptarmigan well. The male is known by a yellow band on his left leg. On eBird.org, if you peruse individual ptarmigan photos, you will see him over and over again.

After leaving the Medicine Bow Curve, still looking for a glimpse of the rosy-finch, we moved onto nearby spots at the Alpine Visitors Center, Lava Cliffs, and Rock Cuts. These are all places where rosy-finches are frequently seen. However, we once again only heard them at the Lava Cliffs.

By ten o’clock we left the area as the tourist crowds had descended on the alpine tundra. Glad we made the early start. We were back in Estes Park before eleven. After grabbing some fast food we headed back to our room to happily crash after three days of hard driving and an early start to the day.

We emerged from our stupor in early evening and decided to run up into the park, in spite of rain showers. One place that looked good was Sheep Lakes just inside the park. Big-horn sheep move down to the lakes for water so we thought that would be cool to see. Of course, we didn’t see any sheep, but as we were heading back a moose did venture out of the woods and into the Lake.