THE LOVESTRUCK GROUSE’S MUST-SEE SHOW
Birders get front-row look at one of nature’s fascinating rituals
AGREAT FALLS, MONT. strange drumming sound filled the pre-dawn dark on the rolling prairie at Benton Lake National Wildlife Refuge. The sound was coming from one of north-central Montana’s largest sharp-tailed grouse leks. The male birds had gathered in a flat spot to rapidly stomp their feet and rattle their feathers as part of a ritualized courtship dance that occurs at the same location each spring.
For the male grouse, it’s an intense battle for the opportunity to mate with hens, and just a few will win.
“If it were a hill, it would be king of the hill,” says Bob Jordan, a biological technician at the refuge.
The dance show is entertaining to watch, and more visitors are applying for the chance to witness it from the “grouse house,” an 8-by-12-foot wooden blind giving them a front-row seat to one of the most unusual courting rituals on the prairie. Visitors are so close to the action that no spotting scope is required. The birds, running on hormones, are oblivious to the voyeurs.
“It’s unlike just about any other courtship routine you can think of,” Jordan says.
But the grouse house is the only place that he knows of in the region where bird watchers can sit on folding chairs sipping coffee while clandestinely viewing the dancing fools — if they have a reservation and are willing to arrive before dawn.
The blind has been in place since 1990. Interest has grown so much the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service put a lottery system in place a few years ago to choose who gets to use the hut, and the prairie peep show is booked for the year.
From a distance of just a few feet, visitors peer out of six windows in the blind, spying on the dancing males.
The grouse stomp their feet like jackhammers, up to 20 times a second, and turn in circles.
With their heads held low, they cock their tail feathers and sprint across with their wings spread wide, looking like little fighter jets. “They’re showing off,” Jordan says. The foot-stomping and feather-rattling creates the drumming that also sounds a bit like cards snapping on bike spokes, or a machine gun, or a running motor or any number of sounds that are similar but don’t quite capture it.
They also inflate and deflate purple air sacs on their necks, creating an occasional boom.
Only the males dance in the communal breeding ground, and the dancing and vocalizing are a broadcast to females that they’re the best males out there. Dominant males control the center, and less dominant males try to butt in with beak-to-beak face-offs occurring between two and sometimes among three birds.
A deep pigeon-like cooing, a cross between a gobble and gurgle, is another sound on the grouse lek, along with higher-pitched whistles. Only a few males on a given lek will win the majority of matings, which drives the intensity of the moves and calls and also leads to continual fighting, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
Birds mate in the vicinity of the dancing grounds. Afterward, hens move to thicker grass cover to nest and typically lay about a dozen eggs.
At 6:45 on a recent morning, as the sun began to rise, turning the sky pink, dozens of the tiny dancers, already performing, gradually became visible.
As the morning progressed, the grouse would freeze in unison and end their vocalizing. The lek would be silent except for song birds before the males started again.
“It seems like it’s a very unique dance routine in that it’s actually synchronized,” Jordan says.
The lek was documented in 1988 with 12 males. Today, it’s not uncommon to find as many as 75 birds, mostly male. Visitors are asked to count the number of males they see on the lek each year.
The population boom has led to spinoff leks that total another 75 birds,but the public viewing blind is at the main lek only. During the rest of the year, the birds scatter and spend more time in shelter belts with trees.
Grouse begin showing up in the leks in May.lows keep late an The them Februaryeye flat to on area see predators,and wherea long remain they which distanceuntil gather include mid-andalcoyotes Visitors and are hawks, asked Jordanto arrive says. an hour before sunrise. It was 33 degrees, and the clucking, booming and drumming could be heard in the dark as visitors, guided by a flashlight, set off across the prairie toward the grouse house. At 7:19, a coyote barked. At 7:21, a buck antelope trotted across the prairie behind the lek. The peak of dancing occurred from just before dawn to about 30 minutes after the sunrise, but 50 to 60 birds, most of them males, were active for a couple of hours. Sharp-tailed grouse are fairing better than their cousin, the sage grouse, which have been the object of new federal and state protections. But the loss of native habitat is a concern for sharp-tailed grouse as well, Jordan says Montana lists populations west of the Continental Divide as a species of concern, but not the area around Benton Lake.