Although we are based out of the University of California Davis, our field studies of Sage-Grouse take us to west-central Wyoming. This is one of the best places to find this species, with lots of good habitat for the grouse and other sagebrush specialists.
View from our camp, 2011
It’s also a stunningly beautiful place to get to work. Our camp looks out on the eastern face of the Wind River Range, a spine of the Continental Divide near Lander, Wyoming. Although we are less than an hour from town, we feel like we are in the middle of nowhere. We can see distant lights from Riverton, and a bit of city glow from Lander, but otherwise we have this patch of heaven almost to ourselves.
Driving through Nevada
The first challenge we face is simply getting all of our gear out to the site. This takes careful packing followed by a long drive through the lonely spaces of Nevada and Utah.
Work trailer arrives.
Once we’ve landed in Lander, the next step is to get the camp set up. Besides our RV, we have to rent a work trailer, as well as propane service. Thankfully we have electricity; there’s a line that runs the well pump for the cattle water tanks in the summer that we can use in the spring (the cows don’t come up until May when we are done with our research- we’ve been fortunate to coordinate with the local grazing leaseholders on this).
Propane tank arrives- nice to have heat, hot water, and cooking capability without having to run into town to fill canisters all the time.
Home sweet home.
Looking for tracks or poop on the lek.
Our first field technicians arrived on March 3rd, and the following day we were out at dawn looking for grouse on the leks. It’s still very early in the season- at least 2 weeks before the earliest sage-grouse mating we’ve ever recorded during our years out here. This means some leks will still be empty while others will have a few males starting to set up territories. Our first visit is to the most accessible lek called Chugwater Lek (in our area each display ground has a unique name). We didn’t see any birds, and a search of the lek surface showed no fresh sign. Our first birds didn’t show up here until March 7.
Scanning Cottontail Lek to count grouse.
Cottontail Lek is our largest lek, and on our first visits there we did find males starting to set up territories. This was the first chance for the crew to see the courtship display, and they were suitably impressed (just wait until they get to experience it from a blind down on the lek instead of a distant look-out point!) We were also treated to a large herd of pronghorn moving past in the early morning light. This was also a new animal for some on the crew. They are taking to the western wildlife quickly, although some are still getting used to the idea of a landscape without any trees!
Pronghorn Antelope near Cottontail Lek
Over the next couple of weeks we will be gearing up for our data collection, which will involve setting up a grid of stakes on the lek to help with territory mapping, installing microphone cables on the leks, starting to get photographs of the males to distinguish them, and hopefully capturing and banding some as well.
I’m kicking off my blog for the 2013 research season with a brief description of what makes sage-grouse such a great bird to study for someone interested in animal behavior and evolutionary biology.
Male sage-grouse courts a female.
One of North America’s most spectacular birds is also a species that not many people have seen. I’m referring to sage-grouse: I study the more widely distributed greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus); I have yet to personally see the less common Gunnison’s sage-grouse (Centrocercus minimus), but that is definitely on my wish list. Given the spectacular plumage of a male sage-grouse in display, why are these birds so hard to see? A quick look at a female sage-grouse tells you the girls are built for crypsis- well adapted to blending in with their environment. For most of the year male sage-grouse also play the hiding game, so unless scared into flight they may pass unnoticed. Yet for a couple of months in winter and spring, males come into their traditional display grounds (called leks, from a Swedish word for “child’s play”) and put on one of the greatest shows on earth. These leks are often in fairly remote areas, and males typically attend them only in the early morning hours. Both of these reasons help explain why getting a look at this spectacle can be a bit of a challenge.
These unusual breeding clusters have captivated not only birders but evolutionary biologists as well. In about 90% of birds, both parents provide some care for the nestlings. In those cases, females are often choosing their mates at least partly on the material benefits they get from this partnership, whether it be the quality of the male’s territory or his ability to provision the female during incubation or the chicks once they’ve hatched. [Note- in many birds males and females mate outside of this pair bond, but that is a tale for another day]. Lekking species are therefore unusual among birds in that males don’t form a bond with their mate nor provide any child care. Scientists are still trying to unravel some of the puzzles that leks represent. Why do males cluster together to display, rather than searching around for females, following females around, or spacing themselves farther apart and defending larger territories like most other birds do? If males aren’t helping raise the kids, why are females so picky? What benefits do females get from choosing one male instead of another? And given that females often pick only a few among the many males on a lek, why do the “loser” males bother to stick around?
(This is a 3-hour time lapse video of the lek. The males appear as small black-and-white specks at the bottom of the frame)
Lekking animals also tend to be high on the charisma scale. Besides the spectacular sage-grouse and their cousins the prairie chickens and sharp-tailed grouse, other lek-breeders include some of the most beautiful and acrobatic birds out there, including birds of paradise, neotropical manakins, peacocks, cock-of-the-rock, some hummingbirds, and ruffs. When we see a species in which males are larger or more colorful than females, we presume these differences are related to an evolutionary process called sexual selection, where one sex- often the males- competes either directly for access to females or indirectly by producing the best advertisement among the other males. This certainly seems plausible for sage-grouse; not only are adult males almost twice the weight of females, but they have a range of specialized feathers, brightened skin patches, and other unique structures.
Male sage-grouse showing his inflated vocal sacs.
The distinctive air-filled vocal sacs are actually part of the digestive system; once inflated with air, powerful muscles just under the skin help move and shape the them during display. In spite of decades of research and routine collection by hunters, we are still finding surprising structures in these birds. Just recently we discovered that male sage-grouse have an almost songbird-like syrinx (sound-producing organ analagous to the human larynx) capable of producing two tones at once. All of this adds up to the bizarre appearance of the male that has presumably evolved through sexual selection- the males with the more elaborate versions of these unique features get to mate with more females and pass on more copies of their genes to the next generation.
These differences between males and females extend to courtship behaviors as well; males and only males have a characteristic “strut” display. A male’s strut serves to attract females to the lek from across the landscape, to woo females once they are on the lek, and most likely to help claim their small patch in the midst of all the other males. Each display lasts about two seconds and involves coordinated movements of the wings and body.
For sage-grouse, courtship is not just a visual spectacle. Males produce a variety of sounds during the strut display. The first two notes actually are not vocalizations at all, but instead made by rubbing stiff, pointed breast feathers against the inside of the wings. This is somewhat analogous to how crickets chirp. Making sounds with feathers may sound unusual, but it has evolved repeatedly in birds. Some common species in the Bay Area that do this include Mourning Doves (the ‘wee-wee-wee-wee’ made during take off) and Anna’s Hummingbirds (the loud chirp made at the nadir of the male’s dive display).
Spectrogram of a sage-grouse display. The two feather-produced 'swish' notes occur at about 2.6 and 3.6 seconds. The first low frequency 'coo' note is at 4 seconds, and is followed by the pop-whistle-pop at about 4.3 seconds. You can hear this in the video above.
The remaining notes are true vocalizations made by the syrinx, although unlike most birds they are made with the beak closed. These sounds start with a series of three low frequency ‘coo’ notes, and conclude with an up-down-up ‘whistle’ note sandwiched between two staccato ‘pops’. You can see these in the spectrogram- this is a visual representation of sound and you can read it much like reading music, with time progressing towards the right, pitch becoming higher towards the top of the figure, and the darkness representing something like loudness. Females may care about some very subtle differences in these sounds when they are looking for a high quality mate. Researchers have compared sound recordings of successful and unsuccessful males and found differences in the relative timing of the two ‘pop’ notes, and maybe the loudness of the whistle. What is amazing is that the differences between ‘Mr. Right’ and ‘Mr. Wrong’ are on the order of less than a tenth of a second. Females may have quite the ear when it comes to picking their mate!
That’s a quick introduction to sage-grouse in the spring. I feel extremely lucky to have heard and seen this show for the past several years as part of my research at the University of California, Davis. Along with Professor Gail Particelli, graduate student Anna Perry, and our intrepid field crew, we will be conducting research into several aspects of sage-grouse behavior and ecology from our field site just east of the Wind River Range in Wyoming. Over the next couple of months I’ll be discussing what it takes to set up a camp like this, how we use new technologies (including robotic birds!) to study courtship in this species, and review some of the conservation studies out of our lab. I hope you’ll join me for our 2013 field season!
For a variety of reasons including wanting to expand the size of our crew, we are looking for an additional one or two assistants for our rapidly approaching field season. Dates potentially a little flexible, but we really need people comfortable driving an ATV (even better if received agency training or certification). Feel free to contact me with any questions.
Anyway, here’s the revised advertisement:
FIELD ASSISTANTS (1-2) needed approximately March 3 – May 5 (dates potentially flexible) for investigations of the behavior and ecology of Greater Sage-Grouse near Lander, Wyoming and the scenic Wind River Range. The projects are part of a larger effort in Prof. Gail Patricelli’s lab at UC Davis to understand how sexual selection shapes sage-grouse display behaviors- see the following websites for more information (http://www.eve.ucdavis.edu/gpatricelli/) and (http://www.alankrakauer.org). Assistants will use video and audio recording technology to support an NSF-funded study of courtship dynamics and display plasticity on the lek. Duties include maintaining camera and acoustic monitoring equipment, observation of basic courtship behavior and lek counts, GPS surveying, habitat characterization, assisting in the capture of adult sage-grouse, data entry, and some computer and video analysis. Assistants must be flexible in their needs and comfortable living and working in close quarters in a remote field station, and able to work in adverse field conditions (mainly MUD and COLD). Work will be daily and primarily early in the morning, with afternoon and night work required as well. Applicants must have a valid driver’s license, basic computer skills, ATV experience (ideally with formal safety training or certification), and have succeeded in at least one field biology project in the past. Wilderness First Aid or First Responder, and prior experience spotlighting for sage-grouse, preferred but not required. Must be able to show proof of United States employment eligibility. Assistants will receive $600/mo plus room and board, but need to provide their own transportation to Lander and their own personal gear. Please send a cover letter, resume, and contact info (email and phone) for two (2) references to: Alan Krakauer, Department of Evolution and Ecology, University of California Davis, One Shields Avenue, 2320 Storer Hall, Davis, CA 95616, or preferably by email to ahkrakauer [at] ucdavis.edu. The positions will remain open until filled, and review of applications will begin immediately.
We haven’t left Wyoming yet, and I don’t consider our season officially done until we’ve washed the vehicles and returned them to Fleet Services at UC Davis, but the crew leaving and having to pack up camp definitely puts me in a retrospective mood. Some thoughts on the 2012 season:
Overall we got REALLY lucky with the weather. This has been an amazingly warm, dry year, and we were rarely prevented from accessing the leks or collecting data. It seemed like we might have gotten a little more wind in the mornings, and the rain-out on our final experiment (when Stacie was going to get to join us on the lek) was a bummer, but otherwise we really could not ask for better weather.
As I said in my last post, the crew was fantastic. This project requires field technicians who completely buy in to what we’re doing, and they seemed to do that. It makes it much more fun when they are nice interesting people who are easy to live with, which they were. Once again, we did a good job selecting these folks out of the pool of more than 70 applicants.
Anna getting video of female behaviors on Cottontail
We collected a LOT of data this year. The arrays were installed relatively early, so we got sound recordings from before or around the peak in breeding. We managed at least two experimental treatments on each lek. Anna collected focal data on courtships and female behavior almost every day.
Gail did a great job turning an idea for a robot into a working tool for interacting with free-living animals. Besides just getting a realistic looking skin on the taxidermy mold, she had to solve challenges like figuring out the best wheels or treads, figuring out how to make the tail bend down when the robot leans forward so the robot isn’t mooning the whole lek. In general, the males really responded well this year.
Having to drop Preacher Lek from our stable of focal leks could have been a problem, but I think we handled it pretty well. Preacher’s replacement, Cottontail, was definitely a challenge, but I feel good about our effort there. Liz (and sometimes Mel) had to put some long hours there waiting for the last birds to leave. There were a lot of birds, and probably some movement of males back and forth from the upper center to our focal area closer to the reservoir. This meant new birds showing up all the time!
Our crew scheduling worked pretty well- it was a little uneven in that Cottontail always had more of everything than either Monument or Chugwater, but there are only so many ways to spread 4 people over 3 leks. Hats off to Mel for being a great floater, and learning the birds at all 3 leks. Although it might not have felt like it sometimes when we had to make last minute changes, but we did a much better job of planning ahead as well. Our crew not only had more frequent mornings off (once every eight days), but often actually knew when those were going to be.
The crew may have spent as much time watching video grouse than they did watching live ones. Collecting video data back in the lab will now be a lot easier, as we will know which males were where for the fembot experiment tapes, focal female courtship tapes, and the sound recording. This was definitely not the favorite part of the job for the crew, but they managed to get it all done.
The "unexplored" valley of Coal Mine Draw, complete with a lek
I found a new lek! And not too far from our camp. I think that’s pretty neat. I got to do counts on several leks I’d never been to. It’s nice to hear from the local managers like Sue and Stan how important these counts are.
No high-speed video this year. We still haven’t analyzed the set of clips that Gail collected last year. HSV is always really fun, and can be something the crew starts analyzing here, but we had neither the time nor the specific question that required it this year.
We didn’t spend much time capturing birds this year. This is probably our biggest challenge now- figuring out how to schedule a crew so we can work at night, in the morning, and in the afternoon. Something to think on for next year.
I got to meet Joe Hutto.
It was really fun to see our research area in such a warm year. The season was advanced substantially, so we got to see a lot of plants and animals that we normally miss. And in any year, this is a really special place to get to live and work. The more than 5000 photos I’ve taken this spring can attest to that!
Working with sage-grouse means having an extremely unpleasant work schedule sometimes. Watching them on the lek entails getting in a blind before dawn. Catching them often means working at night, driving around looking for them using spotlights, and catching them with hand nets. Very few sage-grouse research efforts have combined intensive morning observations on the leks with simultaneous spotlighting at night. We would like to become one of these, but thusfar have weighted our efforts much more heavily towards getting behavioral data while relying on the pattern of the undertail coverts (i.e. “ buttprints”) to distinguish males.
Sunday morning was our first try at spotlighting this year. We got up at around 12:15 AM, and headed out towards Chugwater at about 1. We looked for birds until about 4AM. We managed to catch and band a male and a female- definitely putting us above average for productivity compared with our spotlighting attempts in previous seasons. We managed to get back to camp by about 4:30, had 20 minutes to gather our gear for the lek and eat a quick bowl of cereal, then headed back to Cottontail to run an experiment. We all got a good nap in once we got back, then headed down to Sue’s (the biologist at the local Bureau of Land Management office who helps us coordinate our research) for dinner. Sue sets a great table, and we enjoyed hanging out with Stan (Wyo Game and Fish biologist) and Tim (another BLM biologist). All in all a long but fun day!
The photo above is a time lapse I shot during our spotlighting effort.
