Greater Sage-Grouse Lek 2023

Spring Greater Sage-Grouse

Male Greater Sage-Grouse displaying on the lek.

I had the chance to spend last weekend (4-8/9-2023) with the Greater Sage-Grouse out on their lek in Central Montana. As always, we had an awesome time. There were a little over 40 grouse on the lek which I would say is about average. So that was good to see, being a species of concern, I always worry that some spring I am going to see a decline in their numbers.

The first morning out was fairly cool and we had fairly cloudy skies at sunrise. I am always hoping for at least a little bit of direct sunlight in the morning to help and get some more detailed shots of the birds. We did eventually get a little sun peaking through near the end of the morning, so that was good. We ended up being positioned just a little farther away than I had hoped. While the lek is always in the same general location year to year, where exactly the birds are going to be is always a little bit of a mystery. 

Male Greater Sage-Grouse backlit by the morning sun.

The second morning was very dusty on the lek and we had kind of hazy skies, so it made for some interesting conditions to photograph in. I had also positioned myself a little differently on the lek the second morning hoping to get some backlit birds, as I always like that look when it works out. I would say with the conditions being what they were, it was probably a little bit good and a little bit bad.  

I walked away with a few pictures I was happy with, but I don’t think I created anything new this year that was better than previous years. If you are new to my blog, you can look back at these older posts from years past for some comparison. Sage Grouse March 2021, Sage Grouse April 2021, and Sage Grouse April 2022.

I was primarily shooting with my Canon R5 with the Canon EF 600mm F4 version 2 lens with and without the Canon 1.4x version 3 teleconverter. I also took a few shots with my Canon R6 and the Canon RF 100-500 lens. Please checkout the gallery below for more of the photos from the weekend.

After the first morning out with the sage-grouse I decided to go look for some Ruffed Grouse. Winter has been lingering here in Montana this year, so I was not really able to get into the spots I was hoping to, because the snow was still too deep. I did eventually find a single ruffed grouse, but it was not interested in displaying for me. I am hoping later this spring to maybe get out and try again. 

Ruffed Grouse.

Spring Burrowing Owls

On the evening of May 7th my sister and I were able to observe some burrowing owls in Central Montana. We visited the site earlier in the day when we were coming back from a different outing, but it was storming and I did not have all of my camera gear with me. We only saw two owls during our initial visit, but with the wind and rain coming in, we did not stay very long to look more closely. After it looked like the storms had passed for the day, we decided to take a chance and make the hour long drive back to the site to see if we could get a better look at the owls. Upon arriving at the site, it was still windy as the last of the storms were just leaving the area and we did not see any owls. But not long after, as the weather cleared, we started seeing several owls moving about the area. They were so active in fact, it was difficult to keep track of how many owls were present. Our best guess is there were somewhere between about 6 and 10 owls.

Burrowing owls are small birds and we were only able to get so close to them, as to not disturb them. I had my longest lens on (Canon 600mm F4 version 2) and I also attached my 1.4x Canon teleconverter (version 3) to try and bring them in as close as possible. Even with all of that glass, they were still very small in the frame of my Canon R5. With that in mind, I actually ended up concentrating more on trying to get some video footage. The Canon R5 has a crop mode in video, so I enabled that to try and make the owls as large as possible. I also attached my external Rhode VideoMic Pro+ microphone to try and capture the sounds of the owls. Please check out the video link at the end of this post so you can see and hear the owls around their burrows. I did try to take some still photos and I am including a few here, even though the quality is not the best. These photographs are heavily cropped, so the quality is severely degraded, but I still wanted to share them for illustrative purposes.

Burrowing Owl taking a walk. It looks like he was on a mission.

Burrowing owl looking into the camera. He did not seem very happy about having his picture taken.

Burrowing owl, giving me a bit of a side eye look.

A pair of burrowing owls in the entrance of their burrow.

We only had about an hour with the owls by the time the weather moved out, so there was not a lot of daylight to work with. It was still worth the trip though, as it was one of my goals this year to try to locate and photograph some burrowing owls. I plan to revisit the site to try and get some better photographs. I am hoping if I had more time on the site, I might have the opportunity to get the owls a little closer for some better pictures. I am also hoping later on this spring, that perhaps I can observe some chicks as well, which would be a first for me.

A burrowing owl perched on a sage brush plant against the settings sky.

Greater Sage-Grouse Lek, April 2022

Over the weekend of April 2-3, 2022 I was able to visit one of my favorite Greater Sage-Grouse Leks in Central Montana. It is always one of my favorite trips to make in the spring. The first morning I went out was not as productive as the second. As always, I still had a great time, but there were clouds in the sky and I was also not setup quite in the right spot for the best viewing of the grouse on the lek. The second morning I had some amazing sunlight right at sunrise and I was also in a better position for some closer pictures of the grouse.

Male Greater Sage-Grouse displaying on the lek, with the first morning sun rays shining through his feathers.

A close up portrait of a male Greater Sage-Grouse with his tail feathers glowing in the morning sun.

A profile picture of a male Greater Sage-Grouse displaying at sunrise on the lek.

The only downside to these trips are the early mornings. I have about an hour and a half drive from my sister’s house in Lewistown to the lek. Sunrise this time of year is before 7 AM, and you need to be out there about an hour before sunrise. All I can say is 4AM comes all too early. Luckily I have time to consume a lot of coffee on the drive over. I have considered staying the night closer to the lek, but in early spring the nights are still pretty cold and there is not a lot of protection on the open prairie if the weather comes in.

This year there were about 70 grouse on the lek and that was encouraging to see. Those numbers are slightly higher than the last couple of years. With the Greater Sage-Grouse being a species of concern, I am always happy to see when they are having a good year. Hopefully we have a good spring so chick recruitment will be as high as possible.

Most of my photography and videography were done with my Canon R5, Canon 600 mm F4 ii and I had some help at times with my Canon 1.4x iii teleconverter. I was also using a Manfroto fluid video head instead of my gimble head. I was also using my Rode Video Mic Pro+ for capturing the audio. I had recently upgraded the firmware and that seemed to be causing me some issue on my R5. If they do not put out a new firmware soon, I may have to consider reverting to an older firmware. I was able to work around if for the most part, but it was causing my camera to occasionally lock up.

Portrait of male Greater Sage-Grouse.

A close up picture of all of the details in the tail feathers.

I am not sure if I will get another trip out for Greater Sage-Grouse or not. I still want to get out to a Sharp-Tailed Grouse lek and maybe try something new this year and find some mountain grouse during their spring rituals.

Two male Greater Sage-Grouse fighting over their position on the lek.

Two male Greater Sage-Grouse on the lek. You get to see the front and the back of the grouse.

A male Greater Sage-Grouse with his large yellow air sacks full of air on full display.

A relaxed (non displaying) male Greater Sage-Grouse.

Snowy Owls

On the morning of February 6, 2022, I drove about an hour east of my home to meet my sister to look for Snowy Owls. Finding Snowy Owls was on my list of goals for this winter. I had also wanted to try and photograph Great Gray Owls this winter, but I have not been successful yet. The conditions in town were warm and dry when I left, but by the time I got about 30 miles out of town the roads turned very icy. I am not sure if it was new snowfall overnight that froze or if it was blowing snow that had recovered the roads. I had to slow down, but I still made it to our designated meeting location on time without issue.

We were probably looking for about a half an hour when my sister spotted our first snowy owl. It was on the edge of a stubble field not far off the road we were traveling on. I would guess we were probably still about 100 yards away when she spotted it. With it being so close to the road, we did not want to scare it, so we stopped and I took a few stills and some video from the car. It was too far away to realistically get any good photos, but we were not sure how long it would stick around, so I figured I better at least get a few pictures for documentation if nothing else. I was shooting with my Canon R5 and my Canon 600mm F4 II. I forgot my extender, or I might have considered putting it on. After we watched it for a while we decided to see if we could get any closer. The owl was along the road we needed to travel along anyway, so we figured it was worth taking a chance by getting a little closer. We were able to get a little bit closer, but it ended up flying away while we were still pretty far away. It did not fly real far, but it was still too far away for good photography. We continued down the road a little farther and we stopped to look around a little bit and I spotted a 2nd snowy owl sitting on the railroad tracks. This owl was even farther away than the first. So we just observed it with our binoculars for a while.

Snowy Owl on the edge of a field.

Slightly different pose of the first Snowy Owl we saw along the road.

I had already been out unsuccessfully a couple of times this winter looking for Snowy Owls, so to see two owls in less than an hour was really awesome. I was a little disappointed we had not been able to find one closer though. We continued to look around the countryside and after a little while we stumbled upon a third owl that was sitting out in the middle of a field. This owl was also too far away for any good photographs. When we first saw it, we were not 100% sure if it was one of the first owls we saw that had moved, or if it was a third. After we watched this owl for a while, we decided to go back and check where we saw the first two. Sure enough, those two owls were still where we left them, so we could confirm we had seen 3 Snowy owls.

Snowy Owl perched on an old fence.

Snowy Owl in flight.

Eventually we decided that the owls were not going to cooperate and give us any closer views so we decided to call it a day. We did not want to harass the birds by trying to get too close. Seeing three Snowy Owls in one morning was still an awesome experience and I was able to cross off one of my winter goals. Hopefully the owls will stick around a little bit longer so I can get a chance to try again for some better pictures. All of the photographs and video were cropped to try and showcase the birds. As a result they are not very high resolution. As the morning went on (it was abnormally warm for February) I was starting to get some heat distortion in my pictures as well, which further degraded the image quality. Since the owls were white, there were white patches of snow in many of the scenes and the sky was relatively bright I was shooting with between 2/3 and a full stop of positive exposure compensation to correct my exposures.

Snowy Owl landing on a fence.

Slightly different pose of the Snowy Owl perched on the fence.

Besides the owls, we saw many pronghorn antelope, white-tail deer and I briefly saw what I think was a coyote. All in all it was an awesome morning.

White-tail deer amongst some old farm equipment.

Pronghorn Antelope.

A young buck pronghorn antelope on the run.

As I mentioned, I was hoping to photograph Great Gray Owls this winter too. I found this one (along with a couple of others) in the fall, but I only had my cheap camera with me at the time, so this blurry picture was the best I could do. I was hoping to get back into that area with my better equipment, but I got snowed out. I had not previously posted this picture, so I thought I would include it on this post.

Last Trip of the Season

I decided to take one last trip to the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Range on October 2, 2021. I had not planned on making another trip this fall (my third) but I had a free afternoon so I decided to make the trip. I thought the fall colors in the trees might be at their prime so I should be able to get a few good shots. The afternoon was unseasonably warm (in the mid 80’s) so the elk were a little quite when we first got there. Most of the elk were just lying in the shade of the cottonwood trees. After about an hour the elk started getting up on their feet and started to get active. There were still a lot of elk in the area and there was plenty of bugling to be heard. The bulls seemed to have their harems pretty well established so most of the fighting was just lite tussles between younger bulls. I pretty much used my Canon R5 and my Canon 600mm F4 Version 2 lens for most of the pictures, but I did have my Canon 70-200mm 2.8 Version 3 on my old Canon 5D IV I used to take some wider shots. For it being a Saturday the crowds were actually not too bad. I can only attribute that to it being later in the season and maybe the hot weather.

A mature bull with this cows with the fall colors of the cotton wood trees on full display in the background.

An intimate moment between a bull and a cow while they were still laying down in the heat of the day.

A mature bull strolling around the cows.

This bull was caked in mud that gave him kind of a grey, ghost like appearance.

A mature bull making his way through the sage brush.

A bugling bull seranating a cow.

A large bull amongst the colorful under brush.

A colorful sunset with the elk and fall leaves of the Missouri River.

A bull elk near dark.

Labor Day Weekend Elk

I am still working on trying to post a blog(s) about our trips to Glacier National Park earlier this summer, but I have not had the time to gather everything for that. But I did want to put out something updated, so I thought I would create a post about my quick trip to check out the forthcoming elk rut in the Missouri Breaks in North Central Montana over Labor Day Weekend.

A large herd of elk with a large bull in the center.

Typically I don’t visit the site on the C. M. Russel National Wildlife Refuge until later in September, but I thought I would try going early this year to avoid the crowds. While the crowds were less than they are typically later in the month, it was already pretty busy for my liking. I was hoping if I could avoid the crowds maybe I could get some video with clean audio for once. To me half of the fun of watching the elk is listening to all of the various sounds they make. When the crowds are large and there is so much traffic on the roads, trying to hear the elk clearly is almost impossible. Even with the lesser crowds, it was still impossible to get any clean audio without crowd noise or vehicles driving in the background. I will post a video with unedited audio at the end of this blog. It was still worth the visit however. I would guess there were probably about 100 elk or so. There were two mature bulls and a lot of smaller bulls, spikes, cows and calves. There was a third large bull elk that came out right at dark and he was probably the biggest of the bunch. There was also a large flock of wild turkey’s this year which were a nice bonus. All of these pictures were produced with my Canon R5 and my adapted Canon 600mm F4 II. If you click on an image you will get a full screen version of the images.

The mature bull we saw with the large herd of elk.

The 2nd mature bull elk we saw late in the evening.

With smoke and clouds in the sky, we were treated to a very colorful sunset. The downside is that it did get darker a little sooner than normal with so much of the sunlight being blocked. I may get back to the viewing area again later this fall, but at least if I don’t get the chance, I was able to get this trip in. For more information about the elk on the C.M. Russell NWR please check out my page here: https://www.joshrutledgephotography.com/c-m-russell

The smoke and clouds made for a colorful sunset.

I put together this little video digest from the evening. I decided to leave the audio as is, as there was just not much I could do to save it. You can hear a few bugles and some other vocalization, but there is also a lot of wind, crowd and vehicle noise as well. You will also see the wild turkeys we were enjoying watching along side the elk.

Sharp-Tailed Grouse, April 4, 2021

April 4, 2021 I was able to visit a blind to observe the Sharp-Tailed Grouse on their lek. I had just been out the day before observing the Greater Sage-Grouse, so it was a pretty busy weekend for me. If you are interested in that trip please check out my blog post titled for April 3rd. I probably traveled more than 400 miles in about a 36 hour period to travel east for the sage-grouse and back home and north for the sharp-tailed. Although I was pretty tired, I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to get out and do such amazing things. 

The Sharp-Tailed Grouse gather on a lek similar to the Greater Sage-Grouse, but their mating rituals are quite a bit different. The Sharp-Tailed are quite a bit smaller than the Sage-Grouse as well. The Sharp-Tailed grouse does more of a dance and makes much different vocalizations that consist of some cooing sounds along with some clucks and other calls to attract the females. Instead of the large yellow air sacks like the Sage-Grouse, the Sharp-Tailed grouse have some smaller purple air sacks more on the side of their necks. The grouse also make a strange noise while they are dancing which is difficult to describe. I believe it is caused by the stomping of their feet and the shaking of their tail feathers. If you watch the video below hopefully you can hear what I am describing.

During my visit I saw about 30 males on the lek, but no females. It might be a bit early in the season for the females to show up yet. The grouse were most active before sunrise, so it was difficult to capture the peak of the action as it was still too dark. I arrived at the blind about 5:55 AM and I could hear the grouse show up about 6:10 AM, so I was set up just in time. It was probably a good 15 minutes where I could only wait and listen to them before I could really start to see them. Sitting in the dark just listening to them is a pretty cool experience though. The grouse stayed on the lek initially until about 8:35 AM. They flew off for unknown reasons, sometimes you will see a hawk or a coyote or something in the area, but I didn’t observe anything. I started to pack up my gear and got ready to leave when about half of the grouse came back. So that was pretty neat. They probably stayed about another 20 minutes or so and then took off shortly after 9 AM. While I was in the blind I also observed a ground squirrel, a horned lark, western meadowlarks and I observed some geese and ducks fly by as well. 

The grouse got VERY close to me at times, so close in fact they were inside the minimum focusing distance of my 600mm lens. I can’t remember the exact minimum focus distance, but I think it’s about 4 or 5 feet, so that tells you how close they were. I also had more time and plenty of space so I was able to get my microphone off camera this time, so the audio on my videos is much improved over my previous videos this year. I got an extension cord for the mic and I borrowed a clip off my GoPro so I was able to clip it on an opening of the blind and that worked out well. I had my Canon R5 on my Canon 600mm F4 on my gimbal tripod for most of the morning, but I also had my older Canon 5D mk IV with a 70-200mm F2.8 on a smaller tripod to cover some wider shots. I did swap the 70-200mm onto my R5 for a short while to grab a few still photos and some video at a wider angle as well. I filmed the whole thing in 4k at 60 frames per second. That would give me the option to slow things down a bit for some slow motion, but I did not do that on any of the videos I have edited so far, but I may still go back and do that at some point.

Male Sharp-Tailed Grouse doing a dance on the lek.

Close up of a male Sharp-Tailed Grouse, this grouse was very close, if it was any closer I probably could not have focused on it.

Profile shot of a male Sharp-Tailed Grouse on the lek.

Greater Sage-Grouse, March 13, 2021

On the morning of March 13th, 2021 my sister Melissa and I got up super early in the morning to go check out one of the Greater Sage-Grouse leks we like to visit every year. Most of the leks I like to visit are on BLM land, but I am very hesitant to disclose their locations since they could easily be overwhelmed with people. I do often get asked about them, but as much as I like to help people, I value the safety of the birds more. So many of my “spots” have become “loved to death” in recent years by too many people, so the few I have left I try to protect.  

This was the earliest I have ever gone out to look for grouse. Normally I wait until about the first week of April, but with the warm weather this spring, I had a hunch they would already be out and I was correct. Besides being warm, it has also been dry this spring, which is also a factor since the roads can become very muddy in that country and makes getting to the leks difficult.

This particular morning we got lucky and we were set up in a good spot. While the grouse are usually in the same general area, it is sometimes difficult to determine exactly where they might congregate. The lighting conditions were good and I was able to capture some of my best pictures of the Greater Sage-Grouse yet. I was able to get the new Canon R5 this winter, so it was my first big outing using it. I had ordered the camera back in August, but I did not actually receive my copy until the last week of October. I was primarily pairing the R5 with my Canon 600mm F4 version ii lens for this morning. So far that is working out to be a good combination.

I attempted to capture some video as well, but I had not taken the time to properly setup my external mic so my results were not great. I have also found that even with the external mic the 600mm lens’s focus motors can be picked up on the microphone. I am still working on some ideas for how to resolve this. 

We saw probably about 40 grouse on the lek that morning. It was about ¾ males to ¼ females. We were so early in the spring that we did not observe any of the normal prairie songbirds we usually spot along with the grouse. The Western Meadowlarks in particular are almost always present and also present an audio challenge as their calls can easily overwhelm your audio track.


Portrait of a male Greater Sage-Grouse on a lek.

Profile shot of a male Greater Sage-Grouse on a lek.

A group of male Greater Sage-Grouse on their mating grounds known as a lek.