So, I don't really have an entry today. But feel like I ought to get something down here.

The heeler sisters and I got out lekking again this morning, and overslept a little again. Got another nice picture of a sunrise in my rearview mirror. Which is a bad thing, since I really ought to be off the asphalt and watching grouse well before the sun comes up.

Did not find a new lek where I thought there would be one. But a few of the cocks were out strutting along the road again, near where they were yesterday.

There's a new gas well about 200m to the south, near the high ground of this mesa, and I'm beginning to have a suspicion that these guys don't have a strutting ground.

That they came back this spring to find all the familiar sagebrush plants and stomping grounds gone, with the huge dirt flat with pipes and metal tanks on it there instead.

Can you imagine being the not-quite-good-enough cock last year, watching the boss cock get all the hens, and then coming back psyched up that this year was going to be the year. That you were finally going to get laid for the first time of your life.

Only to find the lek gone. No center territory to claim, no hens to court, no nothing.

No wonder these guys are wandering around strutting by a road. Might be a little suicidal myself.

Spent most of the rest of the day moving the cursor around on digitized maps, finding the UTM coordinates for last August's antelope observations. So that I might finally get caught up on recording these data (which are all due, through February, at the public hearing in River Town tomorrow pm).

So, no lek surveys tomorrow. Sleep now, and more coding all day. Then drive up and get to see if the Confederate rebels are coming to our meeting.

Could be interesting.

Barring any problems, hope to sleep out on a strutting ground tomorrow night. Looked at the split bench seat of the new pickup, and not really sure how comfortable that is going to be.