The Sound of Spring on the Prairie!

GLYNDON, MN—March 31, 2006—Every year at this time, the booming spectacle begins at The Nature Conservancy’s Bluestem Prairie Preserve near Moorhead in northwestern Minnesota. At dawn, visitors sitting in blinds can watch as male prairie chickens court the females. They stamp their feet in a dance imitated by the Dakota Indians, while puffing their black, tan and white plumage and emitting eerie “booming” sounds from the orange and yellow, scarlet-fringed air sacs on the side of their necks. They are sometimes called “kettle drummers” because the booming is reminiscent of someone banging on a cast iron pot.

Brian Winter, a prairie ecologist and the Conservancy’s director of science and stewardship at Bluestem Prairie, has been tending the birds’ tallgrass prairie habitat at Bluestem since 1987. That means carrying out prescribed burns to reduce tree seedlings and help tall grasses grow, working with neighbors on haying and grazing agreements to provide short-grass and habitat for prairie chicken booming grounds, controlling exotic plants that destroy prairie habitat and organizing a dedicated group of volunteers to help count prairie chickens on their booming grounds across Clay County each spring.

Prairie chickens used to abound throughout the Plains, and thanks to recovery efforts, have returned to their booming grounds. In recent years, successful management and healthy prairie chicken numbers across their range in northwestern Minnesota has led to a reintroduction program that began in the early 1990s. Minnesota birds were moved to North Dakota and Illinois, where once-large populations had been reduced dramatically. Reintroduction efforts are now focused on expanding the range of the Minnesota prairie chicken population. Winter, through his role as president of the Minnesota Prairie Chicken Society, works with the DNR, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and people like researcher Dr. John Toepfer.

Toepfer attaches radio transmitters to prairie chickens in the spring. Later in the summer, he moves them south to the Lac qui Parle area in the Minnesota River Valley, now home to about 50 birds. The long-term goal is to connect prairie chicken populations in Minnesota and the Dakotas, which will increase genetic diversity among the birds and, consequently, their ability to survive well into the future.

To watch the prairie chickens up close, contact The Nature Conservancy’s Bluestem Prairie Preserve at 218-498-2679, and reserve a viewing blind. They fill up fast!

For the first time this year, you can also view the prairie chicken courtship at the Conservancy’s Glacial Ridge Project just 9 miles east of Crookston. To reserve a viewing blind at Glacial Ridge, call 218-637-2146.