This is the mating season, and the grouse have begun their mating ritual, an intricate dance that establishes rank in the flock, attracts sexual partners, guarantees the survival of the species and inspires human onlookers across millennia and across cultures. Indeed, perhaps nothing in the natural world has so fixated humans as the mating ritual of the sharp-tailed grouse. The dance of the grouse is almost certainly the origin of indigenous fancy dancing, and it continues to draw eager bird lovers into the open spaces, into the wind, into the rising sun, to observe this extraordinary rite of spring.
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Sharp-tailed grouse – “sharpies” to those of us who love them – are hardly alone in this behavior. In Grand Forks County, one other species undertakes this same kind of mating ritual. This is the greater prairie chicken. Farther west in North Dakota, sage grouse undertake a like ritual.
The prairie chicken and the sage grouse are threatened species, though, and there is concern about sharp-tailed grouse, as more and more grassland areas are converted to tillage, leaving less and less habitat for the grouse. In this season, though, the noise of sharp-tailed grouse can still be heard. It is a sound of promise and renewal and continuity.
It’s worth getting out of bed early on a March morning to seek out the grouse.
So, imagine my disappointment when I found the grouse lek within earshot of my house west of Gilby, N.D., strangely silent one morning last week. It’s the first instance in more than 20 years that I haven’t found grouse at this site.
I have no doubt that the lek site is an ancient one, well used for decades at least, if not longer. It is ideally located for courting grouse, on a sandy ridge left behind by retreating Lake Agassiz. There are views to the east and the west, and there’s grassland and brushy wetlands nearby – good visibility and good cover – the essentials for showing off and staying safe.
This beachline, the Campbell Beach, is nearly continuous from extreme northwestern South Dakota into southeastern Saskatchewan. How many grouse leks might occur along it? I know of two others, each within two miles of this one.
The closest to me has always struck me as the largest, and I had imagined that surplus birds, so to speak, struck out and formed new dancing grounds when this one got crowded. Or, to put it another way, when competition got too intense.
Although all of the males in a flock of grouse strut to attract the attention of females, most of the females mate with only a few of the males, presumably the ones that have proven suitable for parenthood through performance on the lek.
The silence at the lek is a mystery to me. Perhaps I was “rushing the season,” and the grouse aren’t quite ready to begin their show. Or perhaps the weather was not quite right. It was a chilly damp morning, but the breeze was negligible. The sunrise was obscured, however. Or perhaps the birds had moved off as I approached in the darkness. Or … well there are quite a few other possibilities. I’m sticking with timing, however. I expect grouse will show up on the lek. If they don’t, I’ll seek out other grouse.
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There’s news this week about peregrine falcons, last week’s featured bird. Marv is back. This will be his eighth season here. He joined a female that showed up earlier, and they are apparently a mated pair, although this can’t be proven since the female is not banded.
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Earlier in the season, I wrote about house sparrows. They hadn’t shown up at my place for several years, I reported. Early last week, a house sparrow was at my feeder array.
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Pine siskins have returned after an absence of about six weeks. Numbers aren’t as great as they were in early winter, when hordes of them settled on the feeders.
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The redpolls, reliable feeder users all winter, have moved on.
So have the blue jays, several of which came for peanuts most days in winter. The blue jays likely haven’t gone far. They nest in the area, and they’ve carried off a cache of peanuts.
Juncos are back, though in small numbers.
After an absence of a fortnight or so, American tree sparrows have reappeared. These are likely not the birds that were here earlier, but migrants on their way north. I’m making that supposition based on a couple of quirks in the plumage of the earlier birds. One had a tail feather slightly but still noticeably askew, and the other had a smudge in the plumage of its breast. The new arrivals display much crisper plumage.
Jacobs is a retired publisher and editor of the Herald. Reach him at mjacobs@polarcomm.com.
Mike Jacobs
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