With the warm weather we’ve been having, the leks have been quite active over the past week. Male numbers have been fairly stable since the birds started showing up, but female numbers are quite high now, often exceeding the number of males. Leks really feel like different places when things get this busy- not only are the males much more active (displaying more and chasing off encroaching juveniles), but you also get a much different window into how females “shop”. The top guys are surrounded by females, and these females are constantly whining, pecking, and bumping each other to try to stay close to these top males.
Those females are there for a reason, and we started seeing matings on the leks on March 19 and 20th. Within a few days, Cottontail and Chugwater had established some “high performance” males who managed to mate with 10 or more females in a single morning!
