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Combining prescribed fire and grazing management has been recommended as a tool to generate a heterogeneous vegetation mosaic for grassland birds. Past studies have focused on tallgrass prairies of the eastern Great Plains; less is known about fire-grazing interactions in semiarid grasslands of the western Great Plains. We conducted a patch burning experiment in shortgrass steppe (northeastern Colorado) comparing 3 unburned pastures with 3 pastures in which 25% of the area is burned each year. Burns were implemented in October or November of 2007 – 2010, and vegetation, cattle, pronghorn antelope, and grassland bird responses were monitored during 2008 – 2011. Burns removed >95% of standing dead biomass, and reduced vertical vegetation density in mid-June by 53% (1.8 + 0.2 cm on burns vs. 3.8 + 0.3 cm in unburned sites). Cattle preferentially grazed on the patch burns during the growing season, and pronghorn preferentially grazed on patch burns during the fall and winter. Vegetation structure on 2 - 4 year old burns was intermediate between recent burns and unburned pastures, such that attraction of cattle to burned patches did not increase structure in the unburned portions of patch-burned pastures. Grassland birds showed strong responses to the vegetation structure gradient produced by patch burn grazing management. In all four years of the study, Mountain plovers only occurred on current-year burns. Grasshopper sparrows only occurred in unburned grassland or patches burned >3 years ago. Lark buntings and western meadowlark densities were significantly reduced by patch burning, and reached peak densities in unburned pastures. McCown's longspur and horned lark densities were unaffected by patch burning. Findings suggest patch burn grazing management can be an effective management tool to enhance mountain plover breeding habitat, but needs to be combined with other strategies to generate tall, dense vegetation cover for nesting habitat for species such as lark buntings and grasshopper sparrows.