I woke at 3:00 am because I couldn’t stop thinking about sage grouse. But when I looked out the window–yuck! More snow. It looked pretty dire, and one car simply wasn’t going to make the treacherously muddy and now snowy roads, so we crowded 7 people into one van. I got to sit in the back, on the floor, en route, which wasn’t as uncomfortable as it sounds and allowed me to have the whole big back open to see displaying grouse! And the snow stopped about the time we were going up the dirt road to the lek. We saw 16 males and zero females, which meant the males weren’t displaying all that consistently and were shockingly silent. So again, no sound recordings. But I can’t even begin to say how very thrilled I was to see this at such close range. I didn’t bring my laptop, so can’t tweak photos until I get home, but did post a few.

We saw two moose on the way to breakfast in Walden, which is good because Walden’s claim to fame is their splendid moose population. The snow started up again as we were at breakfast, and kept up, making the roads extremely difficult to see, and made birding pretty much impossible at several of the spots Kim had been planning for. My day’s birds:

Canada Goose
Gadwall
American Wigeon
Mallard
Northern Pintail
Green-winged Teal
Canvasback
Redhead
Ring-necked Duck
Lesser Scaup
Bufflehead
Ruddy Duck
Greater Sage-Grouse
American White Pelican
Turkey Vulture
Osprey
Red-tailed Hawk
* Ferruginous Hawk
Rough-legged Hawk
Golden Eagle
American Kestrel
American Coot
Killdeer
* Semipalmated Sandpiper
* Franklin’s Gull
Ring-billed Gull
* California gull
Rock Pigeon
Eurasian Collared-Dove
Mourning Dove
Red-naped Sapsucker
Northern Flicker
Steller’s Jay
Black-billed Magpie
American Crow
Common Raven
Horned Lark
(Tree) Swallow (I’m pretty sure–they were flying in swirling snow, but sounded like Trees.)
Black-capped Chickadee
White-breasted Nuthatch
American Dipper
Mountain Bluebird
Townsend’s Solitaire
American Robin
* Sage Thrasher
European Starling
* American Pipit
Cedar Waxwing
* McCown’s Longspur
* Chestnut-sided Longspur
Savannah Sparrow
* White-crowned Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
Red-winged Blackbird
Western Meadowlark
Yellow-headed Blackbird
Common Grackle
Brown-capped Rosy-Finch
Cassin’s Finch
House Finch
American Goldfinch
House Sparrow