On our way to and from Wray, Colorado, this weekend to see the dance of the Greater Prairie-Chickens on their lek, my friend Sharon and I visited several good birding sites. We had ample resources at hand, including Hugh Kingery’s book, Birding Colorado, as well as two superb websites, the Colorado Division of Wildlife’s “Colorado Birding Trail” and the Colorado Field Ornithologists’s “Colorado County Birding” on the 3G version of my iPad2.

But it was our first stop, at Fort Morgan, that we won our greatest en-route rewards. With a population of about 11,000 people, Fort Morgan is the second largest city in the plains that comprise one-third of Colorado east of the Front Range cities like Boulder where I live. Just north of Fort Morgan, at Riverside Park along the South Platte River, we watched countless geese and ducks in the lake and on the land.

These Are Probably Domestic Geese

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A Goose Spreads its Wings

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A Different Goose

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Three Chinese Geese, Feral Domestic Swan Geese

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Close-up of a White Male Chinese Goose

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A Domestic Duck

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We then drove on to Yuma, a small city of about 3,000 people less than 30 miles from our destination, Wray. At the duck pond in the city park we found even more geese and ducks, including this one.

The Smaller Knob on this Chinese Goose Means that It is a Female

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Leaving Yuma at 5:30 p.m. Friday meant that we barely had time to check into the B&B in Wray, eat dinner, and go to the Greater Prarie-Chicken orientation at 7. But our timing worked, and our greatest rewards came the next day, when we saw the Greater Prairie-Chickens dance.