We awoke to a rosy band of light on the eastern horizon, quickly ate a bagel, and headed down the road towards Chugwater Lek in hopes of seeing where males were settled there.



We did see a few birds flush from the road, as well as this beautiful Rough-legged Hawk, but no birds once we turned down the draw where the lek was. The grouse are definitely taking this winter seriously! We’ve never seen the leks so consistently empty even in early March. It makes us wonder whether the whole season will be pushed back significantly, or whether the birds will rapidly switch gears and we’ll have leks full of birds as soon as the weather improves.

We continued well past the lek to check out another lek site. We didn’t end up finding the lek, but did see an interesting interaction between an extremely alert group of mule deer and a coyote. There were cows grazing in the area as well, but they completely ignored the coyote. It was pretty far away so this is the best photo I could get (coyote is the dark spot up and to the left of the deer).



We also found another neat rock formation. This was similar to the Monument rocks, but without the cap of hard rock to shelter the softer rock beneath, so the face becomes eroded in an amazing variety of shapes.