Well today was the first day of me doing the actual work I’ll be doing for the next month or so. So I got up about a few hours before sunrise and jumped in my late 90’s Ford Explorer and drove out to GPS locations of leks where the Greater Sage Grouse maybe found. A lek is a gathering of males for the purposes of competitive mating display. Leks assemble before and during the breeding season, on a daily basis. The same groups of males meet at a traditional place and take up the same individual positions on an arena, each occupying and defending a small territory or court. Intermittently or continuously, they spar individually with their neighbors or put on extravagant visual or aural displays (mating "dances" or gymnastics, plumage displays, vocal challenges, etc.).
I’m looking to count males that are trying to attract females. These surveys can only be done from about a half hour before sunrise till about an hour after sunrise. I drove to 4 leks today and the first 3 had no Grouse on them. Two were inactive the last few years so it is expected that there would be no activity there. The other has had activity in the past and it may have none now because numbers are declining in all the surrounding areas and there is no explanation as to why. The last lek had 40 males on it with a bunch of females around. It’s a pretty cool thing to see if you have never seen a lek before.
Starting next week I’ll be working on Prairie dog surveys and Raptor surveys after I finish with Sage Grouse in the morning. I have a lot of other projects going on in the next few months but I’ll list those later.
