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<\/p>\nLast Friday, I woke up before my alarm.\u00a0 This in itself wasn\u2019t unusual\u2014even for me\u2014but the fact that I\u2019d jumped the gun on an alarm I\u2019d set for 4:00 A.M. was.\u00a0 I was due to meet my mentor, Destin Harrell, at the Cody BLM office, and ride shotgun with him to count grouse.<\/p>\n
Both species of sage grouse\u2014the \u201cgreater\u201d found across much of the west, and the \u201cGunnison\u2019s\u201d limited to Colorado and a sliver of Utah\u2014gather at sites called leks in the spring, where dozens or hundreds of males display and occasionally clash in the hope of attracting mates.\u00a0 They depend on the sagebrush year-round, not only for their habitat but for a good majority of their diet.\u00a0 Although the adaptations they\u2019ve evolved to obtain nutrients from the sage are fascinating*, they also make the grouse poorly suited to non-leafy foods, and probably easily outcompeted in other habitats by species like pheasant or turkey.<\/p>\n
*I won\u2019t go into detail, because someone might be reading this while eating.<\/p>\n
The greater sage grouse is estimated to number in the hundreds of thousands**, but its range has been reduced and fragmented by roads, cities, agriculture, and energy infrastructure (renewable or otherwise).\u00a0 The long-term spread of invasives like cheatgrass, combined with intense fires that destroy sagebrush over large areas, has contributed further to their vulnerability.\u00a0 Finally, their reliance on leks for mating creates \u201clinchpins\u201d that can magnify the effects of habitat loss.\u00a0 If a lek is converted to human uses\u2014or even encroached on too closely by roads, power lines, gas wells, or wind turbines\u2014it\u2019s almost guaranteed to be lost, and any sage habitat surviving nearby may lose its remaining grouse as a result.\u00a0 (Unfortunately, if humans visit a lek too often, or make too much of a scene while there, the same thing can happen, which can make public outreach on sage grouse a tricky prospect.\u00a0 It\u2019s an unforgiving example of how, as Aldo Leopold noted, \u201cconservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish.\u201d)<\/p>\n
**By contrast, there are probably fewer than 5,000 Gunnison sage grouse.<\/p>\n
The lek was empty when we arrived; so close to sunrise, there should have been birds everywhere, and we were initially nervous that Something Had Happened.\u00a0 A little while after we stopped the truck, though, a few males started to return.\u00a0 Once they got close enough to each other, the strutting and tail-fanning started up again.\u00a0 More came back, in ones and twos, and soon everything seemed normal\u2014at least, as best as I could judge, never having seen the species before.\u00a0 Since we hadn\u2019t spotted any birds fleeing as we approached the lek, it probably hadn\u2019t been the truck that disturbed them.\u00a0 Since there weren\u2019t any other fresh vehicle tracks nearby, either, the most likely explanation was that some other animal\u2014a predator like an eagle or coyote, or possibly a pronghorn or wild horse\u2014had passed through and scattered them as we were still picking our way along the track from the highway.<\/p>\n
The last male arrived at about 8:00, making for a count of fifteen\u2014and one female.\u00a0 If the ratio were that skewed for the population at large, this would be a matter of some concern, but according to Destin, males will display for as many days as they can, while females typically visit for only a few days in a season, and try to choose a mate quickly.\u00a0 This lets them nest and raise the chicks in relative safety, away from other broods that could attract predators or create competition for food.\u00a0 The hen at this lek gave a few of the males a once-over, but was apparently deferring her decision for another day, and spent a lot of her time eating.\u00a0 Some of the less motivated males did the same.\u00a0 As long as we stayed in the truck, they\u2019d probably ignore us, but if we opened the door or raised our voices they\u2019d scatter.\u00a0 One way or another, they\u2019ve evolved to be wary of humans\u2014a trait that has probably saved more than a few of them from the stewpot, but one that can prevent them from breeding if a lek is disturbed.<\/p>\n
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(Somewhere in Wyoming: \u00a0the lek, at about 7:00 A.M. \u00a0For a closer look at similar sites, visit the Cornell Ornithology Lab’s media collection at\u00a0http:\/\/macaulaylibrary.org\/search?taxon=Centrocercus urophasianus&taxon_id=11996311&taxon_rank_id=67&tab=video or the Fish and Wildlife Service’s video archive at\u00a0https:\/\/www.fws.gov\/greatersagegrouse\/video.php)<\/p>\n
There was no wind that I could tell\u2014although by the time we rolled the windows up and crept away, a thin film of dust had settled on my notebook.\u00a0 Except when one of us noted another bird\u2019s arrival, or rechecked the count, there was hardly a sound except for\u00a0ravens in the distance, and the music of the grouse.\u00a0 Every few moments, one male or another would flex his neck and wings, shaking his air sacs with a \u201ctoonk<\/em>-toomp\u201d and a hoot of entering or escaping air.\u00a0 Sometimes, we could make out the sound of his wings whisking against his body feathers.\u00a0 When two birds caught each other\u2019s attention and faced off, they cackled\u00a0quietly, but the two or three scuffles that resulted from these confrontations were silent, apart from the beating of wings.<\/p>\n From both a scientific and a management perspective, it\u2019s not a good idea to humanize wildlife too much.\u00a0 Watching the grouse, though, it was difficult not to.\u00a0 When one of the late arrivals briefly took flight to cross a rut full of muddy water, I thought of a man in an immaculate suit, trying to navigate puddles in the street.<\/p>\n (It was the farther-away of these two birds. \u00a0Again, the resolution needs work, but it does highlight how effective the non-display feathers are as camouflage.)<\/p>\n More significantly, when I noticed that the males weren\u2019t trying to crowd or \u201cherd\u201d the hen, in the hopes of mating with her, it was tempting to characterize them as more \u201ccourteous\u201d than some of the species I\u2019ve observed in the past.\u00a0 After thinking for a moment, though, it was clear that if any of the males approached the hen more aggressively, all of them would risk losing their chance if they didn\u2019t do the same.\u00a0 Even if only one male, or a few of them, acted too aggressively, the female would probably abandon the lek; she might then risk predation or exhaustion from crossing unfamiliar or inhospitable ground to find a mate elsewhere, and both she and the males would risk not mating at all this season.\u00a0 At this point, there\u2019s no way of proving that this was how the males\u2019 restraint evolved, but it makes for a decent starting hypothesis.<\/p>\n Even this early in the spring\u2014or perhaps this late in the winter, considering that it snowed again over the weekend\u2014there were a lot of other species active.\u00a0 On the way to the lek, we glimpsed a trio of mountain plovers in our headlights (regulars in the Bighorn Basin, but possibly endangered and definitely poorly understood), and heard a sage thrasher calling in the dark when we got out of the truck to assess a creekbed crossing.\u00a0 After leaving, while searching for other possible leks nearby, we came across a sage sparrow, several horned larks, and dozens of pronghorn.\u00a0 Like the grouse, sage thrashers and sparrows depend on sagebrush ecosystems, but they\u2019re far more tolerant of humans, and more resilient to habitat disturbance.<\/p>\n After all of that, the golden eagle that crossed in front of us on the drive back to the office almost seemed anticlimactic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last Friday, I woke up before my alarm.\u00a0 This in itself wasn\u2019t unusual\u2014even for me\u2014but the fact that I\u2019d jumped the gun on an alarm I\u2019d set for 4:00 A.M. was.\u00a0 I was due to meet my mentor, Destin Harrell, … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/dev-clm-blog.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/20170407-male-GRSG-close-up-600x338.jpg\")
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