Yesterday we closed the book on 2011 behavioral observations; this was the last day that Erin, Dan, and Mary hauled cameras and tripods to their lek overlooks to film males and map their locations. We’ve collected what I think is a really exciting data set on our three focal leks this year, and it will be interesting to look at the data and see who the winners and losers are, and what makes them different.
With no more new data coming in, the crew are busy checking the data files against their field sheets to make sure we didn’t have any data entry errors. They have thousands of lines of data to go over- when they read it aloud they sound like auctioneers.
The free mornings also mean we can use the next few days to try to capture some more grouse. We spent the weekend installing and testing the drop net down at Monument Lek, and we finally had a chance to use it this morning. We awoke well before 4 to an unexpected half-inch of snow- fortunately not enough to delay our plans. We had the net set a little after 4:30, which ended up being pretty good timing as the birds started flying in by 4:45, when the sky was just starting to get light. The males and females did not seem too scared of the net. We waited until it was light enough to start identifying the males. Unfortunately the females started leaving the net area then, and dragged some of the males with them. We were finally left with three birds under the net, when a nervous one (“Picard”) decided to flush. Worried that we would lose all the birds if they all decided to fly way, we pulled the net. It dropped perfectly! We ended up with two juvenile males that we may be able to ID from video and buttprint data.


We are probably going to try again tomorrow on Monument in order to try to catch some adult males, then move the net to Chugwater before and try their before the crew leaves.