The beauty of butterflies, a gathering of grouse

VIC LEIPZIG AND LOU MURRAY

Migrating painted lady butterflies headed north out of town last

week. So did we. Since we can drive faster than they can fly, we

caught up with and passed the migrating mass in the Mojave Desert. We

were waiting in Death Valley when the leading edge arrived.

A confluence of several of nature’s unusual desert spring

spectacles gave us sufficient reason for driving north: following the

migrating butterflies; seeing the lake that record rains created in

Death Valley; finding spring wildflowers in the middle of the

hottest, driest spot in the United States; and observing the rarely

seen courtship dance of greater sage grouse at Mono Lake.

In normally barren Death Valley, Mother Nature had run rampant

with vibrant, riotous growth. She painted the landscape with broad

strokes of yellow, purple and green, filled the bottom of the valley

with a long, silvery-blue lake and topped the gold- and rust-colored

cliffs with cloudless aquamarine skies.

Awestruck tourists parked at the side of the road, wandering

through thigh-deep fields of gravel ghosts, desert gold, cutleaf

phacelia and other wildflowers. Some visitors waded in the brackish

lake, and a few even explored by kayak. Everywhere, painted ladies

flitted through the air.

We enjoyed soaking in the mineral hot springs at Tecopa and the

Furnace Creek Inn, but we had more desert valleys to explore. We

crossed west over the purple- and gold-flecked Panamint and White

Mountain ranges to reach the snow-covered sagebrush desert that

surrounds Mono Lake. But we hadn’t seen the last of the painted

ladies. The best was yet to come.

Vic had arranged for us to volunteer with the U.S. Geological

Service in their sage grouse monitoring and research project.

Scientists estimate that sage grouse numbered 8 to 10 million in

North America before the arrival of Europeans. Agriculture,

overgrazing, development and invasive nonnative grasses that promote

frequent fires have eliminated habitat and sent this species into a

tailspin. Current estimates are that fewer than 150,000 birds remain

scattered in isolated populations in 11 states and two Canadian

provinces.

Wildlife biologist Blake Barbaree met us at our motel in Lee

Vining before sunrise. Blake monitors the entire population of sage

grouse in Mono and Inyo counties, sometimes skiing or hiking for

miles into roadless backcountry to conduct his surveys. We were

grateful that we would be in his four-wheel-drive truck searching for

a group of grouse known to live in a somewhat more accessible

location.

Leks, which are open areas where grouse mating occurs, were still

covered with snow last week. Sage grouse mating season is supposed to

begin in late March, but the heavy snow might have delayed the mating

dances. Blake’s job for the morning was to try to locate grouse to

see if they had begun to display. Since at least one grouse in each

flock was radio-collared, and since Blake had the antenna, earphones

and receiver to pick up the transmission, it seemed like an easy

task. It wasn’t.

We bounced over rough gravel roads in the stark light of sunrise.

Because grouse range over many square miles, finding them was no easy

task, even with the aid of telemetry. Every so often, Blake stopped

to sweep the terrain. He listened for beeps from the transmitters but

didn’t hear them.

Blake was about to move on to another area when Vic spotted a lone

grouse far off in a snowy meadow. He and Blake hopped out of the

truck as another male with seven females flew in. Soon the two males

began displaying. They inflated their air sacs to puff out their

white chests, then let their chests deflate rapidly to create a

plopping sound. With stiff wings pointed downward, tail feathers held

rigidly high and fanned out and black head plumes erect, they

strutted and pranced on the snowy ground. They impressed us, but not

the female grouse. The hens appeared more interested in eating

sagebrush than mating.

We enjoyed watching the grouse dance while Blake took GPS readings

and made notes. This bit of ground was a previously unknown lek, so

we felt that we had made a contribution to sage grouse biology. For

Blake, one of the more important findings was learning that the

battery in the 2-year-old transmitter of the tagged male was nearly

dead. That would make monitoring this group difficult. To catch the

dominant male grouse in the midst of mating season to reoutfit him

with a new transmitter might interfere with the dynamics of the

flock.

We birded the rest of the day, seeing many butterflies in addition

to the birds. The next morning, painted lady butterflies mixed with

snow flurries swirled around us as we drove past the Mammoth Lakes

area on our way home. The peak of the painted lady migration met us

head-on as we crossed Long Valley in the vicinity of Crowley Lake. We

had never seen butterflies at this density. The noise of painted

ladies hitting the windshield sounded like corn popping as dead

carcasses piled by the side of the highway.

A seemingly endless stream of butterflies blew over the road.

Millions of them, possibly billions. There were so many of them that

it seemed inconceivable they might ever disappear. They appeared as

numerous as buffalo on the prairies, as passenger pigeons in the

Midwest, or as sage grouse in the Great Basin once had been.

* VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and

environmentalists. They can be reached at [email protected].