Prairie Chickens Strut Their Stuff in a Vanishing Spring Ritual

Fifteen minutes before daybreak you’ll hear them. Low, reedy moans that float up the gulch like phantoms on the wind.

To see them you’ll have to wait. And wait. And wait some more.

You must hunch behind a camouflaged tarp with a dozen bug-eyed bird-watchers at an hour so ungodly, even the farmer down the road hasn’t yet stirred.

Afraid to so much as wipe your nose lest you spook them, you are dressed preposterously in a ski outfit to avoid frostbite, 300 miles from the nearest downhill run.

All this for dancing chickens?

“Don’t move,” hisses birder Bob McCready of the Nature Conservancy. “Just wait. It’ll be awesome.”

This could take hours. If it happens at all.

The greater prairie chicken, once a staple on sodbusters’ rotisseries, is nearly extinct in most of its Great Plains range from Canada to Mexico.

The few survivors are vanishing beneath the blades of combines and bulldozers. Disappearing with them is their mesmerizing courtship dance, which entices otherwise normal people to become sunrise voyeurs for a few chilly weeks a year.

One hundred springs ago, the grasslands boiled with millions of prairie chickens in heat. Hunting thinned their flocks before World War I.

The prairie chicken’s dismal fate is shared by most of its winged neighbors. A study by biologist Fritz Knopf of the U.S. Geological Survey shows that grassland birds are experiencing a steeper and more widespread decline than any other group of vertebrate animals in North America.

The nation’s breadbasket is home to 330 bird species. The populations of 70% are dwindling, Knopf reports.

In particular, conservationists worry about a baker’s dozen of grassland nesters they’ve dubbed the “Unlucky 13.” The prairie chicken tops that list. Surveys show it is declining by 7% annually; some states have just a few hundred remaining.

“The greater prairie chicken is a signature species of the prairie, as vital to defining the landscape as bison,” said essayist Christopher Cokinos, former president of the Kansas Audubon Council.

Here they come up the hill, finally.

Five . . . six . . . now seven roosters gather in a ragged circle.

Related to grouse but plumper, they are weirdly resplendent in capes of white and brown striped feathers. Long, sharp tufts point behind their bobbing heads like a chieftain’s war bonnet. Their beady eyes are shrouded by fleshy yellow combs.

Chickens gone punk.

In unison they drop their beaks, stomp the ground, fan their tails and flap their wings in a ritual that is part slam dance, part square dance.

Here comes the best part. The booming.

The boys inflate orange air sacs known as tympany in their throats. They resemble tangerines tucked beneath their chins. When they exhale, they emit a noise sounding like a child blowing into an empty soda bottle.

Whur-ru-rrr. Whoom-ah-oom. Whoo-doo.

Drives the hens wild.

On cue, three drab females emerge demurely from behind yucca clumps.

The boys turn serious. They jump straight into the air, bump breasts and fight in bursts of feathers. They fill the dawn with cackles and hoots.

Some anthropologists believe Plains Indians mimicked booming in their ceremonial dances. Others joke that it inspired end-zone celebrations in football.

The hens will mate with the males who win their skirmishes and defend the biggest territory.

“It’s like nature’s barn dance,” whispers Chris Pague, Colorado scientific director of the Nature Conservancy. “The best dancer wins.”

What’s calling the tune at this hoedown?

“Testosterone,” Pague chuckles.

Booming means spring has arrived on the prairie. It will end in May in central states like Colorado and Missouri. Farther north in Wisconsin and Minnesota, it might last until early June.

Prairie chickens don’t migrate. Their short wings enable them to explode from the grass and wildflowers, but they rarely fly higher than a cottonwood tree or farther than the next gulch.

They always return to the same breeding ground, or lek, unless their ancestral love stage has been turned into a wheat field or a subdivision.

This lek is the flat top of a sandhill on the Fox Ranch near Wray. It’s 150 miles northeast of Denver, past the hamlets of Last Chance, Cope and Joes. Kansas begins a few miles over McCready’s shoulder.

The Nature Conservancy purchased the 14,000-acre parcel in 1998. It carefully runs cattle and horses to approximate the grazing benefits that evolved over thousands of years until the 1850s, when the region’s last great bison herd lolled in these lush meadows.

“It’s the best known example we have left of a tallgrass-plains cottonwood streamside community,” Pague said.

It’s a last perch for grassland birds, too. In addition to the greater prairie chicken, the ranch is a refuge for five other species among the Unlucky 13, including the lark bunting (Colorado’s state bird), Cassin’s sparrow, long-billed curlew, ferruginous hawk and burrowing owl.

The conservancy is working throughout the Great Plains to protect the birds’ habitats. But tourists might be the prairie chicken’s savior.

Bird-watching has become the sort of upscale obsession, like Harley-Davidson rallies and history reenactments, that can provide life-sustaining cash infusions to withering farm towns.

According to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, 63 million Americans spend $20 billion annually on binoculars, bird feed, water warmers and vacations to sanctuaries.

In Lockwood, Mo., a rancher turns his bunkhouse into a bed-and-breakfast for birders every spring. Eagle Lake, Texas, holds a chili cook-off. (They don’t eat the guest of honor.)

Rothsay, Minn., erected a 9,000-pound statue of a prairie chicken. It is one of the Midwest’s most photographed roadside oddities, right up there with the 17,400-pound ball of string in neighboring Darwin.

Wray hosts booming tours in a trailer on private land. Birders from as far away as Europe book their lekside seats a year in advance.

When Chamber of Commerce President Kateri Reeves was hired five years ago, one of her first meetings was held at sunrise in the trailer. She got the point.

“We have the utmost respect for the birds and their land,” she said. “Imagine what the pioneers in their wagon trains must’ve thought when they heard this booming. It must have been a real eye-opener.”

Literally.

Daybreak on the prairie can be gorgeous this time of year. A fat, cold sun hovers on the horizon. Frost sparkles on clumps of blue grama grass and the first buds of white evening primrose.

But not this morning. Slate gray clouds scrape the sandhills, spreading gloom.

The prairie chickens’ ardor cools. After 45 minutes, the boys stop strutting and start pecking in the gravel.

As their air sacs collapse, they squeeze out their last few wheezy notes. It sounds like the end of a bagpipe lesson.

“Awesome,” says McCready, holstering his binoculars.

On cue, the prairie chickens turn tail and fly down the gulch. And into an unlucky future.