It’s Monday morning, first day of Spring, and a fat hazy moon is sinking fast towards the Winds. It’s been a busy few days. I had a hunch that as soon as we shook off Winter’s heavy blanket of snow and ice, that the birds would very quickly get in gear. We’re now having multiple females showing up at most of the leks, and male numbers are stable or increasing. The days we lost are now catching up with us- we’re now having to balance the field set-up tasks with computer work, all the while developing new gear like making a drop net. I suspect we will have our first copulation within just a few days, which will put us on par with our previous seasons.

Preacher Lek now has stakes, although we moved the blind to avoid looking into the sun and now we’re at right-angles to the stakes (an easy problem to fix). We may end up clearing away some of the cowpies there (and possibly at Monument too). We may find a better method than this though!



Monument still needs it’s survey stakes, and all the leks need their microphone cables in. Lots of work left to do this week!

Buttprints are almost done for Chugwater, and Mary is collecting the first real set of male position data today as well as first “official” overlook videos. Hopefully we can get Preacher and Monument up to speed within the next couple of days.

Our first rodent friend of the season, a woodrat nicknamed Cletus, was living in the heating vents for a couple of days. We actually managed to catch it in our have-a-heart trap, and it got relocated towards Chugwater. In spite of our best efforts, it probably won’t be our last furry friend this year…



The picture at top was taken yesterday, on what was apparently one of the closest approaches of the full moon to the earth in a long time. I believe it!