This morning started out pretty much a repeat of yesterday's.

Except we were leaving home nine minutes later. And there were no clouds at all. And the moon was full, and still shining in the west.

Now, even though we were late, I still stopped for a few shots of the setting moon.

Nothing exciting. As usual, the images I didn't capture were better. Like when the moon passed behind the huge radio tower on top of the Continental Divide. Or when I snagged a brief glimpse of it through the narrow canyon that once served as a buffalo jump.

Thought about turning around to take that shot. For more than a mile. But we were late already...

As it was, the heeler sisters and I were well into the flat desert before the orb actually went down below the horizon.

And ten minutes later, the sun peeked out over the Divide behind us.

Fairly bland without clouds. The interesting part about the first rays of red sunlight was how it seemed to make red heelers glow.

Today's plan was to recheck yesterday's strutting grounds, with the hopes the crew on the drilling pad wouldn't mess things up for the first lek, and a falcon wouldn't be harassing grouse on the second.

Didn't work.

Crew was there again on their well pad, working quietly for a while, and then blasting away at the desert with the noise from the well's compressor. Wasn't there when the compressor started, but prior to that, the grouse (the males, anyway) didn't seem too upset by the humans working on the other side of the dirt dikes.

But no grouse on the nearby lek itself.

As I headed for lek number two of the morning, I saw I was in trouble.

A plane. Off in the east, flying low on a perfectly north line. Consultants, flying with our local pilot, looking for sage grouse leks in preparation for a large in situ uranium project someone has planned on this exact ground.

Craaaap. Nothing like buzzing around in a giant, noisy eagle costume to flush grouse off their leks. I raced to my observation point for the next strutting ground and managed only one of the preferred three counts before the plane came looping over.

Surprisingly, only a handful of grouse flushed. Where I had 80 cocks before the plane, there were still over 70 afterwards.

But with them buzzing about, there was no point in heading for my planned lek number three. Instead, I headed due north, out of the uranium project area, and reached another lek.

Which also had 80 cocks strutting away.

Quite a few were strutting right on the county road

which delayed traveling on to the next strutting ground, further east. By the time I arrived there, it was well after sunrise, when the grouse had been strutting all night under a full moon, and there were only six cocks and a hen left.

Thenit was east again, over frozen snow drifts and around iced puddles, homeward bound.