Greater Prairie-Chicken

BirdNote^®

Greater Prairie-Chickens —
Booming Grounds on the Prairie

Written by Bob Sundstrom

This is BirdNote!
[Greater Prairie-Chicken lek sounds]
The evocative, booming voices of male Greater Prairie-Chickens displaying at dawn were once heard throughout the American Midwest.
[Greater Prairie-Chicken lek sounds]
Writing in 1908, Frank Chapman described Greater Prairie-Chickens on their courting or booming ground: “The boom is apparently a challenge. It is preceded by a little dance in which the bird’s feet pat the ground so rapidly as to produce a rolling sound. . . It is immediately followed by the inflation of the great orange air-sacs at the side of the neck, which puff out as quickly as a child’s toy balloon whistle; the tail is erect and widely spread, the wings drooped, the neck tufts are raised straight upward, giving the bird a singularly devilish look . . . [now] the male cackles and springs a foot or more straight into the air, whirling about as though he were suffering from a combined attack of epilepsy and St. Vitus’ dance.” In what Chapman calls the “grand finale of actual combat,” one dominant male displaces his contenders and mates with the attending hens.
Greater Prairie-Chickens today occupy a tiny fraction of their former range. But their voices remain unforgettable. [Greater Prairie-Chicken]
For BirdNote, I’m Frank Corrado.
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Call of the Greater Prairie-Chicken provided by The Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York.  Recorded by G.A. Keller.
Producer:  John Kessler
Executive Producer:  Chris Peterson
© 2007 Tune In to Nature.org                   April 2010

ID# 040307GRPCKPLU               GRPC-01

Frank M. Chapman quoted on p. 244 of Bent, Arthur Cleveland. Life Histories of North American Gallinaceous Birds. New York: Dover, 1934, 1963.