It was a pleasant surprise- getting the microphone cables in on Monument seemed a lot easier than cabling Preacher on Thursday. Not only did we install cables for 12 mics instead of 8 on Preacher, but we had to dig extra-deep trenches across the road in 3 places and run the cables through PVC pipes.



This will be our biggest lek this year, and we needed the 12 microphone positions to surround the main display area while getting mics close to most of the birds. In past years we’ve put in up to 33 cables, recording from 24 mics at a time. Kind of nice to go small this year- with our smaller crew it would have been tough to get everything in without killing ourselves.

In other Monument news, Gail and Dan saw the first copulation there, only one day after Chugwater Lek.