April 10 - Chickens Dancing

The alarm was set for 3:30 a.m., as this was the morning of the Greater Prairie Chicken viewing trip, through the Lesser Prairie Chicken Festival.  I went down at 4:30 to meet the other 13 birders to go out to the Greater Prairie Chicken lek.  We met Terry Mitchell from Tulsa Audubon behind the Chamber of Commerce building and boarded a 12-passenger van for the ride out to the lek near Grainola.  I ended up in the back seat wedged in-between Jason Lott from Los Alamos and another birder from Massachusetts, pretty well scrunched in, on a morning that started in the 70s ºF.  We rode out to the spot, and settled in to wait for the dawn’s early light.As the gloaming lightened, we began to hear the distinctive calls of the male Greater Prairie Chicken,
then saw 9 male prairie chickens strutting their stuff in a field about 75 yards off the road.

Incoming . . .

Eventually, these birds were joined by a few others, and we watched ten cocks vying for the attention of three hens, who generally seemed bored with the whole dance.

If you've never watched the dance . . .

 . . . you are missing out on a Spectacle of Nature

As recently as the early 1900s, prairie chickens were so abundant in the Great Plains that they were hunted for the market and shipped by the trainload to Chicago and New York City.  A combination of intense hunting pressure and the moldboard plow, which allowed people to convert prairie to farmland more quickly and farm larger areas, led to the decimation of prairie chicken populations.

The most recent estimate that I could find of the greater prairie chicken population in North America is around 400,000.  This is about 10 times the estimated population size of the lesser prairie chicken, but is only a tiny fraction of their historical population size in North America.

Handsome birds!

The van was pretty 'close' and the crowd was getting restless, but we didn't want to spook the birds from their lek.
After about an hour of watching, and after watching farmers stop in the road and make noise, we deemed it safe to turn the van around and watch - more comfortably - from the side away from the lek, still so as to not spook the birds.

Terry is checking the field behind us . . .

We watched for another half-hour.  The field across the road from the lek had been burned recently (since Saturday, when Terry had scouted) and the field the lek was in was short grass.

This hen decided to leave the strutting cocks, and walked through the burnt field

We watched the chickens dance until around 8 a.m. then got into the van for the drive over to the Nature Conservancy’s Tallgrass Prairie Preserve about 12 miles north of Pawhuska.  We birded around the bridge over Sand Creek for a bit, hearing the Field Sparrows call, and seeing several more Louisiana Waterthrushes and a Northern Parula.

Digiscoped . . . I'll get the technique down before the year's over . . .

I was impressed with the beautiful blooming of the Redbud trees.

Redbud - Cercis candensis

Shoals of pink petals

Then, we were planning to do a bit of birding at the Osage Hills State Park, but realized that we didn’t have time to get there, bird-watch, and return to the preserve in time for lunch, so we stopped along a little rill that drained into Sand Creek.  Here, we saw a couple of Black Vultures migrating with the more common Turkey Vultures.

Returning for a catered lunch of fajita makings and ice tea, several of us did a little post-lunch birding.  I was intrigued with the early flowers blooming

I don't know this one.  A Phlox?  Any ID help is appreciated . . .

Rose Vervain - Glandularia canadensis

as well as the herd of Bison on the way out of the Preserve.
 
The day was getting toward late afternoon as we returned to Pawhuska.  Some of us went to the Osage Nation Museum, which provides a bit of the Tribal history.  One of the best ‘artifacts’ was the warrior drum of one of the ‘chiefs’ of the tribe, which was used as the model for the Warrior Shield on the Oklahoma State Flag.

Stolen from Tess Maure's Facebook page, 'cause my shot didn't come out

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=527607

It had got up to about 85º today, and was pretty breezy as I headed west on Highway 60 to Woodward.  When I arrived, I realized I hadn’t made a reservation for tonight, but there was room at the Northwest Inn, so they checked me in.  I washed up, picked off a couple ticks (I hate ticks!), and headed down for the ‘free’ fish & shrimp dinner, but found out that they closed at 7:30 and I was too late, so I went to my room, drank a beer and went to bed.

Grainola area lek crack-of-dawn eBird Checklist is Here

Grainola area lek morning eBird Checklist is Here

 (Note that the lek is near the pin drop for these 2 checklists, per the request of the landowner and the Festival organizers)

Tallgrass Prairie Preserve eBird Checklist is Here

Sand Creek tributary eBird Checklist is Here

Tallgrass Prairie Preserve HQ eBird Checklist is Here