Wes Smalling

Star-Tribune Outdoors Editor

The sun rose, lighting up the sky in brilliant orange and purple, over the Hat Six sage grouse lek outside Casper the other morning. I scanned the sagebrush flats with binoculars hoping to see a few whitish shapes of strutting birds appear somewhere out there, but the only white shapes I saw were the butts of a few antelope.

I waited and waited and was about to give up when I heard it:

"Ba-loomp ba-loomp ba-loomp."

Sure enough, 15 male sage grouse showed up and began strutting their stuff, booming away on the lek.

You wouldn't know it by all the action I saw that morning, but according to the experts, the Hat Six lek - the most watched sage grouse strutting area in the world - is in big trouble.

The sage grouse population there is in a serious decline due to residential development and other factors, said Justin Binfet, biologist for Wyoming Game and Fish.

As ranchettes and developments pop up, they bring more roads that fragment habitat and more vehicles traveling on and off those roads. People's horses graze the grass to dirt and feral house cats prey on sage grouse chicks.

Also, according to Binfet and local sage grouse working group member Stacey Scott, the Hat Six area's state lands are being overgrazed by cattle and overrun by prairie dogs.

All those factors are spelling doom for the birds.

In 2000, observers spotted as many as 67 male grouse strutting in a single day at Hat Six. The high counts of each of the following years fluctuated from 33 birds in 2001 to 45 birds in 2005.

Last year the most birds observed in a day was 30. This year no more than 20 have been seen on the lek.

"Darn near every factor that has an impact on sage grouse populations is at work on the Hat Six area," Binfet said.

All but one: oil and gas drilling.

If putting up a few houses does that much damage to a lek, imagine what the heavy machinery and road traffic of energy development can do.

The decline of the Hat Six lek can't really be blamed on drought, Binfet told me. Other leks and grouse populations have improved despite several very dry years.

Human activities hurt sage grouse, whether its urban development, recreation, energy or overgrazing.

The Hat Six grouse appear to be dying off because of a loss of habitat and disturbances to their breeding grounds. They're not just moving on to other areas because observers aren't seeing an increase of birds on other leks nearby, Binfet said.

Hat Six has another problem.

"That lek gets loved to death too," Binfet said, adding that he received a complaint recently about someone driving onto the lek to take pictures of the birds.

If you want to head out to Hat Six or another lek to watch the birds, there are still a couple of weeks left to see the action before the spring mating season winds down. But if you go, here are a few tips from Wyoming Game and Fish on how to avoid disturbing the birds and other birdwatchers:

* Arrive an hour before sunrise and stay in your vehicle.

* Don't drive onto the lek.

* Don't approach the birds. Use binoculars or a camera lens to see them close up.

* Don't start up your car to leave until the birds are gone.