BANNACK - The night's icy air floods in Jay Gore's pickup truck as he begins the morning watch.
“Listen,” he says, peering out through the newly opened passenger window. “We've seen them right here, right next to the road.”
And then there comes the oddest noise of all.
“Glumph ... glumph ... glumph.”
It's a sound not easily put into words.
Remember when you were a kid and you'd put your finger inside your cheek. Remember that popping noise. It's like that, only louder.
“You hear something,” Gore asks. “You hear them? Yeah, I usually can't. Too many shotgun blasts over the years.”
“Glumph ... glumph ... glumph.”
Out in the pitch black, the sage grouse are dancing.
As the first of morning's light casts its gray glow over the sagebrush-covered ridge, Gore picks up his binoculars. The popping sounds are becoming more frequent now. Apparently, the action is heating up out there.
“There they are,” Gore says. “Right there by that dark bit of sagebrush at the top of the ridge. See them?”
The light is beginning to stream in now. Squint a bit and see the dark little shapes strutting around the piece of open ground.
Every spring about this time of year, sage grouse males converge in openings in the sagebrush called leks in hopes of attracting a female. They strut around filling two yellowish sacs on their neck with air and all the while making that odd popping sound.
If one male gets a bit too close to what another considers prime strutting, there can be a scuffle and sometimes feathers fly. The hens stay close to the sagebrush edge watching their suitors strut as they look for the most virile of the bunch.
On almost every morning for weeks on end this time of year, Gore and a dedicated group of National Wildlife Federation volunteers brave chilly conditions and early hours to spread across the state to record the numbers of sage grouse strutting on up to 150 different leks.
From his headquarters housed in a trailer at Bannack State Park, Gore serves as the field manager for the Federation's Adopt-a-Lek program. Every week, volunteers from around the state get their assignments, GPS coordinates of the lek's location and reporting documents before venturing out to their viewing stations.
Ben Deeble, NWF's sage grouse project coordinator, started the group's Adopt-a-Lek program in 2000 when a small cadre of fellow bird hunters took the field to search for grouse.
“It was a chance to get out in the spring and see some birds,” Deeble said. “They all wanted to be able to contribute to the biological information available to Fish, Wildlife and Parks. We knew that state biologists didn't have the time to get to all the leks. We hoped to fill that void.”
Rick Northrup, FWP's statewide game bird coordinator, said the federation's program is making a huge difference in the annual sampling information gathered about sage grouse numbers throughout Montana.
“It's sometimes difficult for our biologists to spend as much time as they'd like sampling sage grouse leks in the spring,” Northrup said. “They are already stretched in the spring. If conditions aren't exactly right, you can invest a lot of time and effort and not get much out of it. An eagle can fly over or a coyote comes in too close and the birds will disperse.
“This volunteer effort is huge for us,” he said. “It's really a great way to engage a good cross-section of people. They have the opportunity to learn about sage grouse and the sage brush habitat ... we're very fortunate that the National Wildlife Federation has been able to pull it off.”
This year, the federation's program has 80 volunteers in Montana and it's been expanded into Wyoming, Nevada and Oregon. In the next couple of years, Deeble hopes to set up similar programs in Idaho and Utah as well.
Across the West, sage grouse are in trouble.
Energy development, the West Nile virus, and sagebrush habitat conversion have combined to literally wipe out populations in places like New Mexico and Arizona. The birds are almost gone in Washington state. And they're about to go extinct in Canada.
“We've lost about a third of their historic range in Montana,” Deeble said. “There are just a whole bunch of issues facing the bird.”
Two years ago, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the plight of sage grouse wasn't enough to warrant a listing on the federal endangered species list.
“We feel they may need to revisit that soon considering the rate they're losing habitat to energy development in Wyoming and maybe soon in eastern Montana,” Deeble said.
There was a time when sage grouse flourished in the state. Old newspaper accounts from as far back as the 1930s talk about 300 cars filled with hunters pouring into the Big Sheep Creek drainage near Dell on opening day.
“Hunters from Butte and Missoula would travel long distances for a chance to hunt in a place where bird numbers were legendary,” Deeble said. “Today there are only a few leks left in the entire area.”
Nowadays, Federation trained volunteers spend weeks on end recording bird numbers at known leks and searching for new ones.
Seven years ago, Mavis Lorenz of Missoula spotted a small article in the Missoulian about the Adopt-a-Lek program.
“I'm kind of an outdoor freak and I thought that was something I'd like to try,” the 80-year-old Lorenz said. “I've always liked camping and I'm kind of an amateur bird watcher. And this is a really nice part of the country.”
Lorenz ventures into southwest Montana's Centennial Valley and other nearby sage grouse haunts each spring in shifts of five days on and two days off. Often as not, she has to wait for the Beaverhead County road crews to plow through snow drifts before she can get into the leks near Lima Reservoir.
“I didn't see anybody else out there this year,” Lorenz said.
That may have something to do with the fact the temperature hovered around 10 above around 5:30 a.m. on some mornings when Lorenz rolled out her sleeping bag in the back of her unheated truck canopy. When the sage grouse end their morning dance, the valley's other wildlife step it up to keep Lorenz entertained through the afternoon hours.
One morning she watched a sandhill crane perform a well choreographed ballet. She saw the antics of the long billed curlews later on that same day. And then she counted 92 elk on a nearby hillside.
“There's always something to see out there,” she said. “You'd have to be straight out of the Bronx not to enjoy every minute of it.”
Lorenz is particularly impressed by the show her primary viewing target puts on each morning.
“You can hear a male popping a good mile away on a day when the wind isn't howling,” she said. “It's an odd noise they make. I've heard it described as a real juicy glumph. The hens cackle like the barnyard variety.”
This year, she counted a record 55 cocks and 22 hens on one lek.
“It was fantastic to see that many birds at one time,” she said. “Will I be out here next year? God and body willing, I sure will.”
Reporter Perry Backus can be reached at 523-5259 or at pbackus@missoulian.com.
|
 |
 |
Add your comment now! Write your comment in the form below.
(Email address is for verification only. If you'd like to email a story, look for the link above)