Know what a strutting ground with 125 cocks looks like?

It looks crowded.

A record high for this lek. (By one bird. Had 124 in 2000.)

And I wasn't the only one looking at the strutting activity this morning.

This ground also had several sage plants decorated with feathers.

The remains of an eagle's breakfast. A hen, by the feathers.

Also had a bunny by the lek.

With the expanding interest in pygmy rabbits, I am more and more making an effort to check these little critters out carefully.

This one was a desert cottontail, not a pygmy. The white cottonball tail and orange nape of the neck tell me so.

From this lek in the basin it was up onto the Continental Divide, literally, to check three more strutting grounds. Up where sand dunes make their crawl, grain by grain, out of the Great Divide Basin onto the Atlantic side of the Divide.

High numbers on the lek that straddles the Divide, but nothing on the lek to the east. The surprise was two cocks strutting away on the lek to the south, which hasn't had any birds seen on it since 1997. Then it was back over the Divide, into the Basin, and towards home.

Watching for pedestrians along the way.