Didn't do much today.

Went out checking leks, despite the wife's prediction of a snowy, wet morning.

She was wrong.

A cold morning, yes. Temperature was still only 34 degrees when the masked heeler and I were headed home.

Yes, only the masked heeler went along. Her sister crawled up and claimed the warm spot by my pillow when I got up for the final time to get ready to leave, making it clear she really wanted to sleep in with her Alpha.

Her sister kept glaring at me all the way out into the desert. Not sure of she was mad that I didn't make the little one come along, since it is no fun at all drag racing against yourself (Or a clumsy biped like me. We tried. She was sorely disappointed.), or if she was mad because nobody told her it was okay to stay home once in a while, and sleep in with the Alpha.

Two leks checked, both with strutting males, and a fair number of hens. Looks like the peak attendance of hens is coming soon. Which is important if you're running standardized counts of leks for population trend, since those counts are to initiate after the peak of hens.

Since I didn't know how much snow the desert got (none to almost none), we were in the sand country north of the gas fields. Refreshing to check leks without drilling rigs on every horizon, and rig traffic on every road.

'Course, that won't last. Got coalbed methane projects going in to the north, west, southwest, and west-southwest of where we were.

And in the west-northwest. By Scotty Lake, and my beloved Honeycombs.

It looks like it's all about to be lost, folks. If you want to see our Red Desert as anything other than a gas field, you best come this year.

Last chance.

Thanks to Wubya and Vice-President Halliburton.

A drilling rig, disassembled on its tractor trucks, passed by to the west of us as I counted lek number one, on its way to make a hole in a new location.

Otherwise, this day was frittered away either in bed watching TV with the wife, or creating new banners for this journal. And a little checking of the database for the elk we lost to the lichen poisoning. Despite my careful review earlier, looks like we may have a couple duplicates.

You woulda thought a fellow who checked an elk on Friday would have recognized the same carcass on Saturday, but maybe not. Looks like a field trip for me to see if there's two bull elk lying 13 meters apart, or just the one.

And today's Grouse Pic is exactly that... a grouse pic.

Found this fellow all by his lonesome, on the highest ridge around, trying to attract some ladies. Or even some competition, I suppose. A group of males will make more noise than one, and have better success at drawing in hens. But when we were there Wednesday, he was all alone.