I rolled over and looked at the alarm clock.

Ten after three.

The alarm was set for three-fifteen. As much as I wanted those five extra minutes of sleep, there didn't seem to be much point, you know?

I got up.

The heelers didn't.

Didn't even twitch.

Fifty minutes later, I peeked into the bedroom and quietly asked...

Are the heelers going?

And two furry shapes exploded past me in the dark.

Guess so.

And so, we went.

A fact I suspect the entire neighborhood is aware of, since the heelers normally make an explosive, noisy exit from the house whenever they're "going".

And it makes no difference to them if the rest of the world is still trying to sleep.

But before we're a mile on the interstate, they're regretting their decision. "Going" is fun, but "getting there" is boring.

And fearful for the blind masked one, who was curled on the seat next to me, her shivering head shoved against my thigh.

And so we head out for our first Breeding Bird Survey. Which, if you missed it, is probably explained somewhere in the archives. Just check entries at the end of June, or first few days of July.

It takes just under an hour to get to the starting point of our route. Real close to fifty miles. We have crossed into what used to be Louisiana long before the first light of dawn.

The headlights of a lone car miles behind us reflected in the side mirror.

The last five or six miles are cobbly dirt road, headed west into the desert. Past Mary's tits, of which I can see only one in the moonlight.

Now, if you look on a government map, you will not find any label "Mary's Tits" for these two perfectly shaped hills.

They're called "Twin Buttes".

But I was told when I got here, "Those are called Mary's Tits," so that's what they are.

I don't know which one that is up there, left or right. Guess you'd have to find some other part of Mary to figure it out...

A couple miles beyond we climb up out of the basin, cresting into the desert itself.

I slow to a near crawl, casting my eyes into the moonlit sagebrush on my left.

I'm looking for the starting point of this route. A rock. A big, white rock.

This rock.

And find it. At 04:48. Our route has to start precisely at 05:02, so we've got 14 minutes to kill.

The heelers finally get their first break of the morning, I take a few pictures of the brightening dawn behind us...

And set out my thermometer to get a starting temperature.

Forty-eight degrees. Without a jacket or even t-shirt underneath, it's cool. But some years we've been close to freezing when we start.

At precisely 05:02, I start my first three minute count.

I hear a sage thrasher, two Brewer's sparrows, three Vesper's sparrows, and one horned lark. I can still see the two sage grouse we spooked off the road when we parked, so I get to count them, too.

I write all that down, then jump into the truck, and slowly roll west.

One stop down.

Forty-nine to go.