The morning started well. Was on the first strutting ground of the dunes lek route well before sunrise. Forty-eight cocks and a dozen hens, and I was enroute to the second lek while the day's sunlight was just reaching the mountains.

Less than a mile from the second lek, and the sun still hadn't popped up.

Even felt I had enough time to stop and take a picture of a tree. The only tree for miles around. One that's been shown here before in more than one sunrise image.

And there's someting odd about the tree. A lump, a shape that shouldn't be there.

Before I could even contemplate a route around the tree (there isn't one, really), the eagle flew.

And I knew just exactly where is was going to go.

I mean, you get woken early out of bed, and what do you want?

Breakfast.

Sure enough, the raptor made a beeline for my next lek, just a half-mile away. And try as hard as I could, a pickup on two-track roads just cannot cover ground as fast as an eagle in the air. When I got to the lek, this

was all I saw. Not one grouse, and the eagle on a direct course for lek number three.

The morning is wasted.

Again.

Because of a f** g**-d** eagle. (Yeah, I cursed those three words aloud. Really loud. I'm sure the bird heard me, even at that distance. Good thing the heeler sisters again did not come along, else their ears would have been burning.)

Now, if I'd have been smart, I would have given up on the route right then and there, and found some other leks to check. But, sometimes, grouse will come back after they've been flushed. So I opted to finish the route, and return to these two leks.

Didn't work. The grouse were almost all gone off lek six, too. And when I came back to Two, it was just as empty as before.

Another morning route ruined.

I hate eagles.

At least, this time of year.

But still, I got to see some grouse halos on lek four.

And the morning wasn't a total waste. Managed to find 35 cocks still strutting on another lek in the dunes, above one of our larger metropolises.

And a few stragglers at yet another, just off the highway.

And then it was straight to town, to say goodbye to wife and eldest son (drs appt in Central City) and get ready to fly for our collared elk, once again.

(Oh, and for those of you who care, I fixed the shrunken size of yesterday's Grouse Pic. If I believe my spam emails, we all know how you ladies hate cocks that are smaller than they should be.)