As much as Julie hates April, I really like it. It is the month when the grouse really start dancing and I get a good excuse to get out of office and actually be a biologist again. The early morning stuff is a bit of a drag but watching the sunrise more than makes up for it. And getting to watch the grouse.
This morning I headed out to do some Greater Sage-Grouse lek surveys. It was another gorgeous morning and one lek I surveys was full of birds, so much that they had spilled out into a new area. It looks like from our early surveys that the number of displaying males are up quite a bit from last year.
This female grouse was hiding out in the grass near the lek. I think I observed more female grouse on the leks this morning than I have in all my previous years. This is usually about the week of peak female attendance at the leks and it certainly seemed like I caught it about right this year.
On the way home I found a Short-eared owl was hanging out in a CRP field.
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