BirdNote; Sage-Grouse Lek and Grasslands

BirdNote®

Sage-Grouse Lek and Grasslands

Written by Bob Sundstrom

Dawn breaks across the sagebrush country of the West on a brisk March morning.

[Sage-Grouse males performing on lek]

Already, fifteen male Greater Sage-Grouse are strutting on their traditional display area, a sparsely vegetated arena amid the sage.

[Sage-Grouse males performing on lek]

As the sun rises, meadowlarks begin to sing.

[Western Meadowlark song]

And we can now see the Sage-Grouse clearly. The enormous males are over two feet long, and weigh six pounds. They stand bolt upright, their long tails fanned like a turkey’s tail, the dark backs and bellies contrasting sharply with their white breasts.

When they display, the Sage-Grouse simultaneously scrape their wings back and forth against their flanks, expel air from twin, fleshy chest-sacs the size of tennis balls, and call softly. The resulting sound combines swishing, popping, and cooing:

[Sounds of Sage-Grouse males performing on lek]

At the display area, known as a lek, the male Sage-Grouse perform for mating rights with the smaller females looking on.

[Sounds of Sage-Grouse males performing on lek]

As lands formerly covered in sage are converted to agriculture, so goes the fate of the magnificent sage-grouse. In some areas, the grouse have less than ten percent of their historical range. Today's show brought to you by the Lufkin Family Foundation.

[Sounds of Sage-Grouse males performing on lek]

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Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Display sounds of the Greater Sage-Grouse recorded by G.A. Keller; call of the Western Meadowlark recorded by W.R. Fish

Producer: John Kessler

Executive Producer: Chris Peterson

© 2013 Tune In to Nature.org March 2013 Narrator: Michael Stein

ID# orig 030806GRSGKPLU SotB-GRSG-01b