28 May A Sage-Grouse Sunrise

I recently had the opportunity to help the wildlife team with a sage-grouse lek count. Lek counts mean a very early morning! We arrived on at their strutting grounds 45 minutes before sunrise to ensure that we did not startle the grouse when they were active and remained there well after sunrise to record the sage-grouse that were present. As the sun rose we were able to watch their breeding activity. The males perform a strutting, puffing, and popping mating call. They make a popping noise with their wings and puff out their chest. I encourage you to find videos online of their unique mating call! While the sage-grouse were performing their mating ritual we recorded the number of male and female grouse for our data and remained extremely quite to ensure that they were not disturbed. We made these counts every five minutes from sunrise and continuing a few hours into the morning to see watch as more sage-grouse appeared at the strutting grounds.

The two sage-grouse seen in the pictures in the blog are both male. You can tell that they are male during mating season because of their white, puffed up chests and fan of tail feathers. In the fall they are much more difficult to tell apart from females as they lose these prominent features.