It’s just after 6 a.m. on the north end of the Jackson Hole Airport runway and Bryan Bedrosian is frantically cutting through nylon netting with a pocket knife, trying to free a large male sage grouse that thrashes between his knees.

Five minutes earlier, a shotgun blast sounded across the tarmac. Using a remote trigger, Bedrosian fired a shotgun shell, sans the shot, that propelled the four corners of the net over the strutting birds of Wyoming’s most bizarre sage grouse lek, or breeding ground.

It was a big catch – six birds – and, despite blowing wind and 20-degree temperature, Bedrosian, Geneva Chong and Vincent Slabe have all donated their wool hats to the cause, placing them over the heads of several sage grouse to keep them calm.

My job is to keep four female sage grouse from escaping from stacked lengths of PVC pipe, each capped on one end, where the researchers store the birds until they are weighed, measured, bled and radio collared later this morning. Watching the birds is a bit like that game Whac-A-Mole you might find at Chuck E. Cheese, except the birds all try to escape at the same time, and instead of a mallet, I use gloves and other winter gear to gently push the birds back into the pipes.

Today’s successful catch is good news, not only for the biologists, but also for the Jackson Sage Grouse Working Group, one of eight in Wyoming that received state funding to help the birds.

“Everybody is worried about the bird, and rightfully so,” says Bedrosian. “Sage grouse used to be in extremely high numbers throughout the West. Habitat loss and fragmentation has seriously hindered their ability to survive and also reproduce. Without help it really looks like the bird might become endangered in the near future.”

Jackson sage grouse populations have bounced back from a low of about 47 males in 2000 to about 146 males last year. Jackson Hole’s sage grouse population reached a peak in 1950 with 223 males. There are five or six historic leks in the area that haven’t been active lately or have only been active sporadically.

Instead of rehabilitating sage brush or attempting to kill sage grouse predators like other working groups in Wyoming, the Jacksonites have opted for research. The group paid $62,000 to hire Craighead Beringia South to find out why sage grouse numbers are declining, where they live and what is eating them. The project is expected to cost around $300,000.

“I think here research is one of the biggest needs that we have right now,” said working group member Franz Camenzind, who discovered a new lek last week. “We need to find out what we have and what might be limiting their numbers.”

Using radio collars and Global Positioning System devices, Bedrosian will map sage grouse movements between each of Jackson Hole’s seven leks, the clear areas among sagebrush where male sage grouse gather and display to attract females during mating season.

What makes the Jackson Hole Airport lek unique is that the birds actually court each other partially on the runway. While ordinary human disturbance can disrupt mating, males at the airport seem to regard planes as rivals not threats, puffing out their chest to establish their dominance.

Even with a bird/airplane strike or two every year, the Jackson Hole Airport lek is thriving. Between 25 and 27 males court about 29 hens by expanding their air sacs, spreading their feathers and making vocalizations that sound like popping the safety seal on a tin jelly lid.

As 7 a.m. approaches, the biologists move the captured birds off the runway to Bedrosian’s truck to avoid the noise and danger of departing airplanes.

Slabe and Bedrosian handle the birds while Chong, a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, records the data.

First up is the big male. After placing a gold-studded leather hood over his face, the biologists measure its leg length, wing length and head.

The grouse is then placed in yet another wool hat that gets hooked onto a scale. At 2.7 kilograms, Bedrosian says, the bird is likely one of the lek’s dominant males.

Bedrosian then attaches a yellow and blue plastic leg band, takes a blood sample and lets him go.

“Whoever displays the most, is the most aggressive and is in the best condition will breed more often,” says Bedrosian. “They [females] are looking for the guy that beats up all the other dudes and dances the best.”

Bedrosian explains that males don’t get radio collared because it’s the nests that he and his colleagues are looking for. The males subscribe to the love ’em and leave ’em style of courtship and don’t stick around to help the mothers raise the young.

“Once the hens have offspring, we’ll go out and put transmitters on the offspring,” said Bedrosian. “It’s pretty intrusive to get into a grouse nest, they abandon pretty easily.”

For that reason, and so that the chicks don’t outgrow their radio collars, Bedrosian will wait until late spring or early summer when the birds are fully grown to attach their tracking devices.

With a total of 40 VHF collars and four Global Positioning System collars, Craighead Beringia South researchers can then find out what habitat these birds like the best and where they travel. Also, by overlaying data from collars attached to predators like ravens and hawks, Bedrosian can see which predator foraging areas overlap with the nesting grounds of sage grouse.

According to Bedrosian, while ravens do eat sage grouse eggs, they’re reputation for causing the grouse’s decline is likely undeserved. Coyotes, foxes, raccoons, crows, magpies, badgers, weasels, snakes, ground squirrels, chipmunks and even elk are also known to feed on sage grouse eggs. “Everybody points their fingers at ravens but it’s really a small piece of the puzzle,” he said.

The research isn’t all theory. With the data, Craighead Beringia South biologists can tell wildlife managers where these birds spend their time, especially during the winter when sage grouse rely on tall sagebrush protruding through the snowpack to survive. Managers can then save those areas from disturbances such as prescribed burning and development. Further, the data can help wildlife managers identify and promote areas that could be good sage grouse habitat in the future.

As the last females get their radio transmitters, Chong spots a male and female getting ready to mate at the very tip of the runway. “I can see her soliciting,” she says.

Bedrosian provides a little anthropomorphic commentary: “She’s saying, ‘You’re the bird. You’re the man. I don’t care who is watching.’”