I started drafting this post almost two weeks ago now, but the maelstrom of field work and packing at the end of the season delayed its completion. I’ll try to briefly summarize the last week of the season now…

As the calendar flipped to May, we had ceased our normal behavioral observations, and wrapped up the recording. Our goal for the last few days with the crew was to do some more drop netting, check the field data for data entry errors, and collect as much as our field gear as possible. It turns out our successful capture of two birds at Monument foreshadowed a productive day at Chugwater. After a stunning sunrise, we caught seven males in the net there! That’s as many males as we got in the rocket net, so we feel pretty good about the drop net as a less expensive replacement for rocket nets as we try to catch more birds in the future.


It was a hectic few days, but we did manage to get almost all of the data entered and checked, and also got the microphone cables pulled up at Chugwater and Preacher, and all but four up at Monument. Pulling the cables out of the ground is generally pretty easy since they are not buried very deep in the soil, but they need to be wiped down to remove the mildly corrosive dirt, and also coiled up properly so they are ready for deployment next year. We also have to pack down the now-empty trenches so we don’t provide any place where water can erode the lek surface and create a new gully.

We said goodbye to Mary, Dan, and Erin on the 4th with quite a bit accomplished. However, there was still much to do. We tried one more drop-net attempt on Monument to try to get a couple more males. Sue and Tim came out, as well as Sue’s husband Dennis, to give us extra hands. Unfortunately we had a weirdly blustery dawn- the wind picked up quite a bit after we had set the net, and one corner of the net fell enough to disuade any grouse from going under.

Gail and I also got another round of counts in at some of the leks. We really started to notice declines in numbers the last few days- Gail’s final count at Monument was only 3 birds, that stayed for only a few minutes. My last visit to Chugwater only yieled about half of the maximum number of males from the season. It was interesting to actually see the end of the breeding season. In most years we stopped visiting leks at the end of April, when the males were still going strong.

One big task on my agenda was to GPS the leks. I was worried I wouldn’t squeeze this in- since it requires leaving expensive equipment unattended on tripods it difficult to impossible to do in strong winds, and I’d had quite a few afternoons lost to that already. Thankfully we did not have that many points to do on any given lek, and I was able to find gaps of a few hours when I could visit our three focal leks. While the wind was not an insurmountable problem, I did face a new obstacle- cows! We had always left before the ranchers were permitted to release their cows on the land up here, but with our work extending so far into May this year, we were no longer so lucky. This was only a problem at Preacher Lek, where the small pond drew in several dozen cows who were more than a little curious about me and my gear. I had to set up the static tripod in the bed of the Rhino, then work as quickly as I could to GPS the stakes before the cows knocked them over. Apparently they make pretty good neck-scratchers.







I also finally got a couple of photos of two of the sparrows that we hear around camp and near the leks. Sage sparrows are one of the first birds to show up, and one that apparently is not that easy to see since many Wyoming birders have contacted me about our sightings.



Brewer’s sparrow is another species that can be tough to see without some effort. Although it is one of the dullest birds you’ll ever come across, the song is quite elaborate. The descending series of buzzy trills has been described as “like an alien spaceship landing”- a pretty great description.