June 10, 2012 - South Dakota Prairie Bird Workshop - Part 3

At the Prairie Bird Workshop I attended in South Dakota, we had access to several blinds set up at Greater Prairie Chicken courting grounds. These areas, called leks, are places where male Prairie Chickens, like the one in this photo, gather to do their courting displays. It’s like a singles bar, with all the males trying to outdo each other. I went to watch the Prairie Chickens with two other workshop participants. We had to be in the blind before sunrise, which was about 5:30 a.m., so we didn’t disturb the birds.

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Here’s a female Prairie Chicken. She lacks the yellow area above the eyes and the colorful neck sac. A female Prairie Chicken will come to the lek and, if she decides one of the males is up to her standards, she mates with him. Usually only a couple of dominant males get to mate with the females.

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Here’s what the male looks like when he is displaying. He puffs up his “eyebrows”, erects the long feathers on his neck, and inflates his neck sac. The sac is called a tympani and makes a booming sound as it is inflated and deflated. He also stomps his feet and dances around.

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As part of the ritual, males also leap into the air and fly short distances

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It’s a very impressive display that goes on for a couple of hours. Eventually, no more females arrive; the males lose interest and they move on. The day I was there, the action was over by about 9:00. At our blind, we counted about a dozen males and, at most, two females.

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Here’s a close up of a male. The grass was fairly high, so sometimes we couldn’t see everything that was going on.

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