Oh, what a good day!

And it started after an extra hour's sleep. Thank somebody for Daylight Savings Time! (Sorry for those of you on civilized schedules, but for those of us on solar time who try to live with civilized time folks, this is great.)

It rained all day yesterday and the night before, so no strutting ground counts yesterday. But today was cold (so the mud was frozen, at least til about 0900) and overcast (so the eagles were grounded and the grouse played late) and things went well.

Started one of my standard lek routes today, as opposed to just driving around checking grouse on their strutting grounds (leks). This is going to take some explaining. If you don't want a basic biology lesson on the sex lives of sage grouse, click here.

Each spring the male grouse (like the guy on this page) gather in small open areas in the sage and strut. Their goal is to attract and impress hens, so they can breed. The older males arrive first in the season, because they know the rules of the game and where the lek is. The rules are, whoever struts in the center of the lek will get the most attention from the girls. Usually one or two cocks get to do all the breeding on a given lek. Everybody else is celibate.

Getting the hen's attention is no guarantee of getting to breed her. Researchers have found hens keep track of how often a male struts, and how fast. More frequent and faster struts suggest greater fitness, and if she's impressed, you get lucky. Cocks also cannot keep this up all season long, and radio-tracking data has found they occasionally take a morning off to feed and rest, usually about one morning in five. So the grouse working week is four days long with a one day weekend.

Or is that actually a one day work week with a four-day weekend of trying to impress girls at the single's joint?

Either way, as the season progresses, the younger males gradually figure out the game and begin to show up and strut. Many of the yearling cocks don't get it until late in the season, and the number of cocks on the lek (I wonder how many google hits I'll get off the "cocks" in this entry?) will peak in the latter quarter of the strutting season (March to early/mid-May, depending on latitude and elevation).

The hens, on the other hand, tend to all come at once, which has been about now this year, or in the past few days. There will be a few stragglers throughout the season, and some who don't get properly inseminated or lose their nest of eggs early will still be showing up in late April or early May.

Anyway, if you want a good idea of how many cocks attend a lek (and thereby an idea of the population size), you need to check the same leks throughout the season to get an idea of the number of males at the "peak". Hence the standardized routes that I and others will run 4-5 times per season.

Lesson Over.

So I had five leks to check today, and got to all five while birds were still there, with some time to spare. Only minor problems with mud puddles and snowdrifts, although the heelers did get thrown into the dash more than once as we busted through drifts. Need a good seatbelt harness that would still allow them to bounce back and forth in the cab. Without tangling themselves. Any inventors out there?

Hens were just walking off the last lek when I arrived, with their "attendants". Occasionally, when a pod of hens leaves a lek, there will be some young males who just don't get it, and will follow along trying to impress the ladies, strutting as they feed along. The hens ignore them.

I'm not sure how the hens feel about their attendants. They sometimes follow for a mile or more. Great way to advertise to eagles "here's breakfast!" But then, if an eagle does show up, they are almost certain to nail the silly little surplus male who's showing off, so maybe he wasn't so bad to have around after all.

All in all, a good start to the day. Now to get paperwork done.

Our outfit has got one of its annual meetings in a town two hours from here tonight. Probably won't get done until 21:00 or later. Rather than driving the whole distance home and then getting up early to check leks, I have taken up the annual habit of spending the night in the cab of the truck by a strutting ground. Saves an hour's driving at night and an hour's commute in the morning. So sometime today I have to decide where I'll sleep tonight.

It's really enjoyable waking to the sound of grouse strutting (although with a full moon, they strut all night, and then there is very little sleep). Woke up to grouse and eight inches of snow once, that was cool! Also tried sleeping on the lek in a sleeping bag once, but woke up with chicken shit all over the bottom of the bag. Duh!! It's easier to sleep in the truck, even though it's six inches too short and the steering wheel is a pain!

On the way home I noticed Corky's truck is still there. Will keep you posted.