Thursday 26 March 2015

[cobirds] Re: Gunnison Sage-Grouse, Waunita lek

I was at the lek last weekend and the road is open and you can see birds from the road.  I parked at the traditional site (0.6 miles from the highway) to view the birds before it got light.  After it was light enough to see I scanned the field from my car and could not see any birds.  After a while I got out of my car and began scoping the area until I saw one bird flying to the north of where I expected the birds to be.  Once I drove north (about 1.2 to 1.5 miles north of the highway) I was able to have good, but distant views of the birds (~20 males and maybe as many females) for a good bit of the morning.  I am guessing the closest one to the road was about 800 meters.  I did have some females fly right over me after they left the lek site.  As the morning went on, more birds began moving up onto the ridge across the valley.  This is more than one kilometer from the road.  I left once the sun came up and I could no longer comfortably look towards the east where the birds were, but several males were still displaying from the ridge.

I hope this information helps!  I don't know what they are going to do about the lek, since you really can't see the birds from the pulloff.

Andy Bankert
Fort Collins, CO

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