by Dennis Plank
Sorry Neil, couldn't resist that one. Coincidentally, this was also my first experience with Sage Grouse. This lek has a sad story. It's at a place called Foster Flats near Malheur NWR and they had a fire a few years ago that burned most of the sage. As you can see, it is starting to come back a bit. However, the lek is down to five males and I only saw one female the morning I was there. Interestingly, even with that few males they still compete to be one of a core group which consisted of three birds with two outliers on the edges of the main lekking ground.
I really felt sorry for one woman who came by to see the lek. She'd last been there 30 years ago when there were 300 males displaying-what a sight that must have been.
7Dii, 500mm f4 ISL + 2.0TC, beanbag on truck window, f/8, 1/1250, iso 1250, aperture priority, center weighted average metering, +1/3 stop exposure compensation. Processed in LR5 and CS6. Cropped to 14.2MP from the original 20. It was a gloomy morning, so I warmed the image up a bit as well as brightening it. Taken at 8:34 am on March 21st.
Your comments and criticisms are very much appreciated.
Thanks for looking,
Comments
3 commentsMaybe, Maybe not, but a mover and shacker I'm sure.
Sad that we will probably never return to those glory days of old. Fire is one of the major factors affecting the health of the Sage Brush steppe. The effects of fire are long lasting and invasive species retard the rebound even further.
I learned of the plight of the Greater-sage Grouse through my participation here on NPN so I can only hope that others will learn from our efforts to bring more exposure (pun intended) to their plight.
Thanks for sharing a cool shot. Nicely done!
Very nice, Dennis. The composition is a bit different, but it emphasizes you point on the catastrophic collapse of Sage Grouse populations.
Sweet portrait of this handsome fellow displaying in its environment Dennis. A very nice composition.
This spring marked the eightenth year I have been photographing at this particular lek. The fire did have a dramatic effect on the number of birds for sure. During my first visits to the lek it was easy to see 40 to 50 males displaying here, some of them within a few feet of the road. But I noticed a decline in numbers even before the fires, the spring before the fire I believe we counted sixteen birds on the lek. As busy as that female was this spring, I am hopeful next year we see a couple more males on the lek.