The 2011 sage-grouse breeding season now moved from a general descriptor of birds attending leks to a specific statement of an action: we had our first matings today! There were a lot of females on the lek early in the morning, and while they were hanging out with the males, none were giving a solicitation display. When females are ready to mate, they drop and spread their wings, and lower their body.

It seems like at least an hour had gone by, and the females were still just milling around, when I caught sight of a soliciting female across the lek from my blind. Male #404 (code-name Sargent Clusterbutt- we’re naming our males to help remember their buttprint pattern), was the lucky guy, and became the first male to copulate this year, at least that we’ve seen.

For reference, our previous “first of” dates ranged from 18 March 2007 to 21 March 2008 to 30 March 2006. We’re pretty much in the middle here. In some ways this isn’t too surprising given that we’ve had pretty nice (although windy) weather for the past couple of weeks. But to go from single digit birds less than 2 weeks ago to full-on breeding is still pretty amazing to me.

Speaking of tail feather patterns, although this guy looks pretty good from the front…


He won’t be too hard to recognize when he’s turned around!