The Great Outdoors(man): Living Right, A Morning with Prairie-Chickens

From a dark fog I begin hearing incessant music…it’s louder than normal, but…what is it? I’m slowly brought back into the world, finally realizing it’s my alarm clock. Disoriented, I look at the clock: 1:10am. For a second I’m in shock; I just went to sleep 2 ½ hours ago! And then I remember. There’s only one thing in this world a bird watcher would get up this early for: prairie-chickens. Considering myself more of a bird adventurer, though it’s hell, there are probably quite a few things I can think of that would get me up this early. But today, it’s for chickens. Four years is how long I’ve lived just three short hours from the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Pawhuska, Oklahoma and four years is how long I’ve had to pass up on the opportunity to watch the Greater Prairie-Chickens display. This year, it was too much to bear. A few days earlier, birder friends called me from the preserve, holding the phone out the window so I could hear the chickens booming while I was stuck in class...how rude. I also had an offer from a local photographer to give me the grand tour. One of the same phone-holding birders calls this “chicken fever”, and fever it must have been to get up at such an unsavory hour.

The Tallgrass Prairie Preserve (TGPP) is, in my opinion, one of The Nature Conservancy’s greatest works. This sacred tract is the largest contiguous piece of tallgrass prairie left on the planet. This rich ecosystem once stretched from Texas to Minnesota without stopping, touching my native Arkansas along the way. Today it exists only in patches. Over the last century-and-a-half, the prairies have been tamed by barbed wire, plowshares, and cattle. The TGPP is a rarity in that it’s so vast. At 39,000 acres, it is always in the process of growing: up in productivity thanks to burn management, and out thanks to the sale of adjacent ranch spreads. This early morning trip was not my first to the prairie, just my first during prime chicken season. In fact, the TGPP is one of my favorite, close getaways. Every fall a group of birders from my area escapes the infamous Bikes, Blues, and Barbeque festival. If you like motorcycles, BBQ, and brawling, this is for you. If you don’t like your town turning into an earthquake zone from bike-noise and tour helicopters, then refugee you shall become…to the TGPP!

A typical winter scene on the preserve, taken in January.

The Greater Prairie-Chicken once existed in around 20 states: throughout the Great Plains, the Midwest, even along the northeast coast and southern Canada. Today they remain in just a fraction of those states and in small, disjunct populations at that. The northeastern subspecies, the Heath Hen, is extinct, while its brethren live on at great risk. Efforts have been made to conserve those that are left, but too little too late in many cases. The challenges of saving a fragmented species in their fragmented ecosystem are enormous, which is why a place like the TGPP is so essential. Their cousins: Lesser Prairie-Chicken, Gunnison Sage-Grouse, Greater Sage-Grouse, and several others, also remain, but at risk. Their respective predicaments make spending time with them all-the-sweeter.

Prairie-chickens nest and raise young from late spring through the summer. In winter, they have a tendency to flock. During these seasons, they are hard to find; in summer because they are dispersed throughout vast prairie and in winter because if you aren’t where the flock is, then you won’t see them. In other words, unless you find a noisy lek (display ground) in the spring, good luck!

At 5:00am, another northwest Arkansas birder (one of the cellphone-holding offenders) and I met up with our friend in the small town of Pawhuska, Oklahoma, the seat of Osage County. ----Yes, the setting of August: Osage County. I believe part of it was actually filmed on the preserve and in nearby Barnsdall.---- After coming up with a plan of action, he led us onto the dark preserve. The stars in this vast expanse of sparsely populated Oklahoma were incredible and the moon had sunk below the horizon allowing for their full potential. The Milky Way trailed its way from north to south as coyotes howled to it in the early morning chill. By 5:40, we were set up on a known lekking site, I in a blind and they in a truck, just waiting for the first chickens to arrive. For those unfamiliar with the antics of prairie-chickens, a “lek” is a small piece of high ground with little vegetation; an anomaly in the vast expanses of tallgrass prairie and a case for the importance of historic fire maintenance. Here males display and fight to attract the attention of a female.

View from the blind...too early.

As the horizon began to blush orange, I closed my eyes to listen to the coyotes and early birds: Eastern Meadowlarks, Killdeer, and somewhere Greater Yellowlegs. Suddenly from my southeast I hear the whir of wings and an outburst of cackles, neither of which I recognized…they must be prairie-chickens! By 6:15, four males were booming to my east. This “booming” is a low-pitched, wavering whooo emanated with the help of bright orange vocal sacs. As the day began to brighten, I caught a glimpse of my first chickens as they danced in the half-light. These first four moved around quite a bit, apparently not the norm for a lekking site. Finding a suitable spot would prompt a lowering of the head, raising of the “horns”, expansion of the vocal sacs, and release of the haunting boom. Then the head raises slightly and the prairie-chicken begins to quickly stomp its feet, spinning in a circle. If no one was watching, a series of cackles might be given: “look at me!”, beginning the process again. At the first lek, no willing females ever arrived to observe their suitors. By 6:30, the four amigos had flown the coop, hopefully to some female-laden site nestled among the prairie’s rolling hills. They didn’t go, however, before we got to see one perch up on a big buffalo cookie…now that’s the tallgrass prairie.

Chicken number one awaiting sunrise.

We, too, flew the coop, but being that the sun wasn’t even up yet, we weren’t even close to done. Our faithful guide knew of another lekking site. We loaded up in his truck and bounced back to the main (gravel) road. Ten minutes later we found ourselves cresting a rise as the sun rose, casting it’s golden-orange light across the dramatic landscape. To the west lay prairie that was still mostly dormant. To the east lay new growth from a tract burned just six weeks earlier. Short grass started in a draw and climbed up the rise to where we sat. The emerald blades were laden with dew droplets, glinting like gemstones in the morning sun. Among the droplets, a mere 15 yards from the the road, danced prairie-chickens: ten males and three spectating females.

The males glided through the grass with a grace that would bring jealousy to even the most practiced danseur. Several were in the center of the lek surrounded by the females, others were dispersed around its perimeter. Those in the center were the dominant males; long horns, large orange vocal sacs with a pinkish wash, vibrant orange “combs” above the eyes, and with the most vigorous dancing…almost constant. These males were engaged in battle often; charging each other, forcefully leaping into the air and kicking at their opponent. The females calmly watched, seemingly unimpressed. I for one, was impressed.

Two of the dominant males.

The magic of it is enough to make a man get down on his knees and sing praises to the Creator and is more meaningful than even the most inspiring church services.

One of the subordinate males put on a less impressive, but still awe-inspiring show right in front of us. He was trying hard with his shorter horns and orange-yellow vocal sacs, but his time hadn’t come yet. For thirty minutes we watched the chickens wheeling around the lek. Booms, cackles, stomps, wing beats filled the still morning with rich music. This is what I live for.

A subordinate male.

Unfortunately, life must go on in ranch country. A cattle truck barreling down the road put an end to the show too soon. They didn’t go far, maybe 200 yards further into the prairie. We watched from that distance as several males got back to work. With the sun behind them, their bodies were framed against a hillcrest, surrounded by glittering dew; a picture of the tallgrass prairie at its finest 150 years earlier, as it should be. The chickens began to come back within half an hour, but they were slow and we had seen the main show. In fact, we had gotten such a performance that my white-knuckling of the camera left me with numb fingers! It was unbearably beautiful.

Two of the males going at it against a dramatic landscape.

I daily find delight and solace in nature, but it’s not often that it moves me so deeply. This did. Watching the prairie-chickens sent faith-filled chills through my body…faith that this world isn’t such a bad place after all.

With full hearts, we continued on to a productive day of birding the preserve. It was only 7:45am when we finished with the chickens (though it already felt like 3:00pm). Surprisingly, chickens aren’t the only amazing critters on a spring prairie. Throughout the morning, Upland Sandpipers gave their long whistles from short grass, among the likes of cream wild indigo, celestial lily, and fringed puccoon; all secrets of the tallgrass prairie. As we walked through more newly greened prairie, we came across another lekking site, still going strong with five prairie-chickens at 9:00am. Suddenly a small bird darted like a mouse through the short grass, coming out in a bare patch 20 feet ahead. LeConte’s Sparrow? Henslow’s Sparrow? It just didn’t look right and neither did the habitat. We speculated on these two more likely options before finally settling on Grasshopper Sparrow, a species we weren’t quite expecting to see yet. Its bold yellow supercilium and cream-khaki face put it in stark contrast against the green grasses and charred ground.

Grasshopper Sparrow acting very grasshopper-like.

Not long after, Henslow’s Sparrows were singing from some unknown stalks, just below the surface of a yellow-brown sea of last year’s prairie grass. This patch must have spanned thousands of acres and been home to copious numbers of Henslow’s.

By 11:00 we had parted ways with our Pawhuska friend and began the 15-mile trek out of the preserve. Along the way, we stopped to enjoy some wildflowers only to find a freshly-emerged Ornate Box Turtle (Terrapene ornata). A denizen of tallgrass prairie, it has gone the way of the prairie-chickens in many places, due to the downfall of an amazing ecosystem. We enjoyed this colorful individual, a male, with impish red eyes. Nearby, a hundred or more bison played in the prairie; adults and golden calves enjoying the sunlight and green grass.

Ornate Box Turtle

Our final stop before we made our exit was to a Barn Owl roosting site we found last fall. Not knowing if the birds would still be there, I bushwhacked my way to their humble abode. Barn Owls are widespread but common nowhere, so to see them again AND get a photo, was the sweet, buttercream icing on this day’s prairie cake.