Last issue I told you about a prairie chicken, ol’ Lonesome, I’d gotten to know one April morning long, long ago. I was out hunting on Taberville Prairie with my good friend Don Wooldridge.
After an early rising, we sat behind the blind and watched what I still call one of the most remarkable rituals of nature, prairie chicken mating.
The place where we waited was a high knoll. The native grass was mowed each year to enhance its attractiveness as a booming grounds.
The booming ground was so called because the singular sound emitted by the chickens is a “booming” sound, as heard from a distance. Heard closer, it takes on a distant two-syllable “word.” The booming ground is the scene, wherever prairie chickens exist, of that age-old business called the mating game.
Nature has decreed that prairie chickens be polygamous, and that the males impregnate the females of the species on these booming grounds, following ritual. Here, the cocks comes to preen, to strut, fight, cackle and boom; do everything within their power to make the hens desire him.
Then came Lonesome – and his exclusion from the group.
Fascinated by his antics, I failed to see when the hens arrived; but suddenly I noticed the flock in the center of the booming ground had increased to 30. Not all of these birds were strutting, fighting or booming, and closer observation revealed they wore less brilliant plumage – the hens are also slightly smaller than the cocks. Too, all the cocks had tail feathers erect, their orange eyebrows blazing, pinnae (neck feathers) extended like horns. To distinguish them was not difficult.
It was obvious that the cocks were taking special note of the hens’ presence. It was obvious, too, that Lonesome was being ignored. He became frantic, leaping about with short thrusts of wings, cackling madly, booming constantly. When all else failed, he dared intrude into the territory where the other birds courted. But Lonesome, unwilling to do combat, turned tail and ran back to his own ground as the other cocks chased him. Lonesome, downcast, stopped preening for a time.
Then, six hens moved toward Lonesome. The other cocks, nearly frantic at Lonesome’s good fortune, nevertheless respected his territory as he defended his harem like a game cock.
Lonesome was lonesome no longer.
Following the mating, which occurs from late March to late May, the hens no longer return to the booming grounds, but go to prepare a nest in heavy foliage. The nests are some two to three inches in depth, seven inches in diameter, of dry grass. Here, they deposit their clutch of 8 to 16 eggs, of dark buff to grayish olive, tinged with sepia spots and occasionally flecked with red.
Most chicks are hatched in late May or early June. They are equipped with a tiny saw atop their beak, and it is used to “pip,” or break, the shell from the inside. Once pipping starts, they emerge from the shell anywhere from half an hour to 24 hours later. Most all chicks are hatched within a 24-hour span. The chicks become very active in a few hours and the mother hen has a hard time restraining her first babies until all are dry and ready to venture out for a meal of insects.
The chicks, covered with greenish-yellow down, exist on insects for the early weeks of their life, and sip dew droplets to satisfy their moisture requirements.
The Ozarks area of Missouri has been returning to grassland agriculture, but most of this new grass is fescue or alfalfa, not the bluestem, Indian or switch grasses native to the region, and prairie chickens just don’t seem to like it.
Unlike most wildlife, prairie chickens are one species of creatures which used to be counted individually, thanks to the booming ground performance. The technique of counting was developed by Charles W. Schwartz, then a talented artist, author and biologist for the Missouri Department of Conservation.
The method used to be for research biologists to drive along roads in known prairie chicken territory, stop at half mile intervals and listen for booming grounds from two different positions. At each stop, if booming was heard, the booming grounds are visited on foot. Each booming ground is given a number, and in each case, the number of birds seen, type of cover and topography are recorded.
The number of males per booming ground is averaged and multiplied by the number of booming grounds computed to be in each route; since the extent of the range is known, the total numbers of males can be computed. Sex ratios run from 1.72 to 1.55 for males to each hen.
Schwartz contends the booming of the males consists of threes notes – the lowest seldom below the first E-flat above middle C; the highest seldom above the next G. “While there is a slight drop at the end of each note, the second and the third maintain an even pitch,” he reported. “They might be written – oo-loo-woo.”
We can’t argue. No doubt different ears hear different notes. At any rate, the mating call of the prairie chicken is fascinating, as is his whole ritual.
