Greater Prairie Chicken Booming
One of nature’s annual phenomena that is both inspiring as well as entertaining that can still be witnessed is spring displays of the Greater Prairie Chickens on their booming grounds. In early spring male prairie chickens come out to stake out a small speck of land on one of their ‘booming grounds’. They congregate on a booming grounds attempt to defend a small portion of the ground with the center apparently the most sought after plot of land.
They have a rather elaborate display / dance where they stomp their feet, puff up their orange throat sack and display their orange eyebrows and eye feathers. Occassionally, they get into a brief fight with another male. On the day I went their were eight prairie chickens staking out the booming ground by my blind. We got in the blind right before dawn and the birds flew in together 15 minutes later. I’m not sure where they spend the night, but all eight flew in simultaneously. These eight birds have apparently been staking out this particular booming ground for weeks. The males pick one particular booming ground and typically don’t deviate from it while females are thought to flit between different booming grounds.
The booming occurs at dawn and lasts for a few hours. The hopes of the 8 males that I observed were dashed as no females bothered to stop by. According to Sharon the Coordinator for the Central Wisconsin Grassland Conservation Partnership, mating had pretty much peaked a week ago and was rapidly tailing off.
In Wisconsin, the Greater Prairie Chicken eeks out a marginal existence. They’re confined to the few remaining grassland plots in Central Wisconsin in and around Portage County. They once flourished in Wisconsin and for a time their population was quite strong in Southern Wisconsin particularly after logging had been through, but they need large plots of grassland (not farmland) to exist. They like treeless plains, where arial hunters can’t roost. The Buena Vista Marsh, where I had the opportunity to view them, is actually a drained swamp, but it is now managed as grassland.
Their survival in Wisconsin is precarious at best. Their current range is confined with an insufficient population and movement corridors to ensure genetic diversity. While some predation occurs and tough winters can push down their population, like any species habitat is key. Competition for land with cranberry farmers is the largest current threat along with lack of funding to purchase the planned land to expand the marsh.
Male Greater Prairie Chicken in Display
If you’re interested in seeing these birds you’ll probably have to wait till next year as their booming is almost done, but the trip I took through the Natural Resources Foundation, www.wisconservation.org, was great. I also found out that there is an annual Prairie Chicken Festival designed to bring people together to experience this grassland and see these birds. You can find out about this here, http://www.goldensandsrcd.org/pcfest/index.htm.