Winter Raptors of Southeast Colorado

There’s something undeniably wild about winter on Colorado’s southeastern plains. Under wide-open skies, golden grasslands stretch to the horizon, and sharp-eyed raptors patrol a landscape shaped by prairie dogs, pronghorn, bison, and other iconic wildlife. Join Reefs to Rockies for a four-day wildlife safari through the windswept grasslands of southeastern Colorado, where winter brings exceptional opportunities to experience the region’s wildlife at its most dramatic.

Our adventure takes us to two remarkable private landscapes that are not open to the general public. We’ll spend a full day at Heartland Ranch Nature Preserve, Southern Plains Land Trust’s largest preserve, where landscape-scale conservation is restoring vast, connected prairie ecosystems. We’ll also explore May Ranch, an Audubon Certified Bird-Friendly working cattle ranch where expansive shortgrass prairie, prairie dog colonies, seasonal wetlands, and riparian areas provide important winter habitat for birds and mammals.

Raptors are the stars of this winter safari. We’ll search for golden eagles, ferruginous hawks, prairie falcons, bald eagles, American kestrels, merlins, northern harriers, and the occasional great horned owl, watching not just for species but for the behaviors that make a prairie come alive. Prairie dogs are especially important to the story: these keystone animals shape the grassland and provide an important source of prey for golden eagles, ferruginous hawks, and other predators, while supporting an astonishing array of wildlife. If we’re lucky, we may even witness the dramatic interactions that unfold around prairie dog colonies, including coyotes and raptors competing for the same prey.

From our four-wheel drive safari van, affectionately known as the Roaming Bison, we’ll have comfortable, unobtrusive access to the open prairie. Custom-designed by two wildlife biologists, the van’s pop-top and panoramic views allow it to function like a rolling blind, ideal for watching hunting raptors, wandering bison, pronghorn, and other wildlife without disturbing the rhythms of the landscape.

This is a wildlife safari in the truest sense—four days immersed in the expansive winter prairie, with raptors as our focus and the entire grassland ecosystem as our backdrop.