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Male Lesser Prairie-Chickens in southwest Kansas put on quite a show to attract females. They raise their long neck feathers, fan their tails, stomp their feet, and inflate their orange throat sacs to yodel. Once abundant across the plains, the birds have lost 85% of their historic range. The US Department of Agriculture launched an initiative in 2010 to provide subsidies to landowners to improve habitat, and it's helping.
BirdNote®
Lesser-Prairie Chickens in Kansas
Written by Suzanne Hogan
Come early spring, across the southern Great Plains, you can find male Lesser Prairie-Chickens putting on quite a show.
Here in southwest Kansas at a lek, or mating area, the males are defending their territory. They raise their long neck feathers, fan their tails, stomp their feet, and inflate their orange throat sacs to yodel.
[Yodeling]
All this to attract brown and white striped females.
The Lesser Prairie-Chicken was once abundant across the plains, but they’ve lost 85% of their historic range due to agriculture, overgrazing, invasive trees, and land development.
Regulation’s been tough. Most of the birds’ habitat sits on privately owned land, like Mike McCarty’s Kansas ranch, about 50 miles from that lek.
McCarty: Yes, we need to protect our wildlife and everything, but we also need to protect our people, our agriculture.
Attitudes like these got the US Department of Agriculture to launch its Lesser Prairie-Chicken Initiative in 2010 to provide subsidies to landowners like McCarty to improve habitat for the birds. By doing prescribed burns and uprooting invasive trees, for example.
McCarty was skeptical at first, but after a massive wildfire killed half his cattle and burned 90% of his crops, he decided to join the program. He says getting that subsidy has kept his ranch afloat and helped the Lesser Prairie-Chicken, too.
McCarty: We have seen probably 15-20 prairie-chickens at a time, which is a lot more than what we’ve seen for a long time. They are coming back.
Over the last decade, the birds’ population’s improved a bit. But its conservation status remains in limbo.
Next spring, around the time when the Lesser Prairie-Chicken is yodeling, the US Fish and Wildlife Service will determine whether to list the bird as endangered.
For BirdNote, I’m Suzanne Hogan.
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Producer: John Kessler
Production Manager: Allison Wilson
Editor: Ari Daniel
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Associate Producer: Ellen Blackstone
Field Recordings by Suzanne Hogan
© 2020 BirdNote November 2020 Narrator: Suzanne Hogan
ID# LEPRCH-01-2020-11-10 LEPRCH-01
Suzanne Hogan
Writer