Had a charity rummage sale at 09:00 that the wife wanted to stop by, and then an auction at 10:00. So we needed to keep our strutting ground survey short. As in check the leks close to town that I save for just such an occasion.

Made the heeler sisters happy. We slept in at least an hour past normal. Didn't leave home until 11 minutes before sunrise.

Wonderful things, GPS units. Just change to the right screen, and there's the exact (at least to the second) time of sunrise and sunset, for your specific location. Lot easier than calculating from the posted time for some big city, adding 4 minutes for every 100 miles west.

Or is it 1 minute for every 400 miles west?

Or 1 minute for every 100 miles? I forget.

Like I said, wonderful things, GPS units.

Anyway, we got ourselves up on top of the Continental Divide (the Atlantic branch) just a few minutes after sunrise, before the sun had reached the three leks just on the west side of the divide.

That's the Divide, looking south (and I'm parked on the Divide). Snow destined for the Mississippi River and the Atlantic on the left, snow locked into the Great Divide Basin on the right.

Think of those snowflakes. One extra little gust of wind to move you 10-20 meters, and all of a sudden the water molecules in you are going to take a journey thousands of miles longer than the molecules from the flake that formed right beside you.

That's chaos theory, folks.

Anyway, you can spot two strutting grounds from one place up here on the Divide, and then a simple turn of the truck brings a third into view.

'Course the two close ones are two miles away. The third is four miles distant.

Hard to count grouse that far. You can't just count the white specks. You have to squint and stare at the lek area for a while, giving each grouse down there a chance to turn around and flash his white up at you. And keep track of where they all are, and mentally track them in your head.

What started as four cocks on the first lek eventually was confirmed as at least eight separate males, strutting their stuff.

No way at all of seeing the hens. Not that that matters.

No grouse on the second lek. What has actually happened here, is that about 10-15 years back, a single strutting ground on a ridge split into two, less than a mile and a half apart.

About the same time a gas well was drill nearby, but that may be a coincidence. But in the past few years, the first lek moved back to the old site, and now the birds have abandoned the second lek for the old site as well. And, according to my pilot, they are on the exact same site they were using at the end of the 1970s.

Weird.

The third lek is even harder to count. One, they're a long ways off (but fortunately in a clearing), but they also happen to be the exact size of the little blind spot in my scoping eye. So I have to look a little aside to see the birds.

Look at them, and they vanish. Look 10 meters either side, and there they are.

Only got one poor count on them, before the sun hit them, and then they all flushed. Don't know why. But at least we know the lek is active still.

Gave the sisters a couple runs on the Divide, and then we hustled home for breakfast and newspapers in bed before heading in to the rummage sale.