Hello again from wonderful Kemmerer, Wyoming. Winter still has its grasp on this high desert town. Even with winter’s grip still holding strong, we were finally able to make two field visits in preparation for Sage Grouse Lek season that will be starting soon. I was able to get a quick tour of some grazing allotments that I didn’t get to visit while working with the BLM last summer. Getting out was sure a nice change of pace. We did some hiking to look for some geophagy locations; these locations are where grouse gather during the winter, to basically eat dirt. The BLM is not entirely sure why this occurs, hypotheses include eating for mineral supplements, or to help buffer the tannins in the sage brush that is consumed. This practice could also occur during the summer months, but with the lack of data on the particular phenomenon it is unknown if geophagy occurs in the summer months or why Sage Grouse even eat the soil. We were unable to identify any of these locations on our first trip to actually look for them.
Our second trip to the field was to Pinedale, Wyoming on February 24th . This little town is about two hours north of Kemmerer situated along the Wind River Range. It is a beautiful town where I was able to spend much of my childhood. We met up with wildlife staff from the Pinedale field office. The plan was to go look at some of these geophagy sites to help our field office in the identification of these sites. We were able to visit 7 of these locations. We looked at soil type, vegetation type, and amount of bare ground visible. I have to say I should have remembered my camera because the ride into those locations was epic. We didn’t get stuck, but the amount of snow we had to drive through was amazing. After this second trip, the wildlife biologists at the KFO are certain geophagy sites do exist in our field office; it will just be a daunting process of finding them.
All the hiking that has occurred in the past two weeks makes a person start to think about how out of shape they are. With that realization of being horribly out of shape I decided to start exercising. I am hoping to be in decent shape in time for the full onset of field season. I will hopefully be posting pictures next month of Sage Grouse strutting on their lek locations. I am very excited to see this phenomenon. Till next time, I hope everyone has fun.
Kind Regards,
Jeremy Sykes
Kemmerer Feild office, Wy
Bureau of Land Management