We knew it had to end sometime, our balmy weather reaching into the 70’s and nights sometimes floating above 50. Monday’s forecast called for rain and snow showers, with no accumulation. Sounds harmless, right? The snow turned out to be a little more sincere than we expected, and we woke up to several inches on the steps and walkways around camp. The storm, which was supposed to quiet during the night, was still blowing when we got up. Anna and our brave assistants went out anyway, (sound recording was out of the picture because of the wind and precip, so instead I got some private time with a statistics text), and saw only a handful of males briefly visiting the leks.

The lingering effect of the snow is, of course, the mud. I went down to Monument Lek to record this morning, and it was a wet and wild ride in the UTV. Good thing Gail picked up some extra garbage bags, because all of our gear would have been coated with mud from the trip up and down from camp.

We are definitely past the peak in breeding now. There were only 3 females on the main portion of the lek today, and all three mated. It took one female 3 tries however- the first two times a neighboring male interrupted the copulation attempt. The other two females both chose the same male, and mated only about 30 seconds apart. This male was missing a number of tail feathers, suggesting he may have survived a predator attack of some sort.

Our Melissa count is up to two now- Gail’s graduate student Melissa arrived in Lander on April 1. She is preparing an outreach presentation for the local tribal college, and will be visiting the leks with us for a few days as well.