The Patchwork Prairie

Before that morning, I had never heard a Greater Prairie-Chicken boom.

I had never watched one dance.

I had only become fascinated with them.

For most of my life, when I pictured a bird out on the prairie, I pictured a pheasant. Then I began learning about the Greater Prairie-Chicken—Tympanuchus cupido—and my understanding of what a prairie bird could be changed.

The more I learned, the more fascinated I became.

Eventually, I was given the opportunity to see them for myself.

Before the crack of dawn, I found myself inside a blind at Tympanuchus Wildlife Management Area with Ross Hier, a longtime Minnesota DNR wildlife manager and longtime advocate with the Minnesota Prairie Chicken Society.

The air was cool, crisp, and wet.

The prairie around us was still mostly darkness.

And we waited.

Then morning began arriving.

As the first light spread across the grass, the dance floor started to fill.

At first, there were only shapes moving through the dim prairie.

Then came the sound.

There really isn't another sound I know quite like it.

The closest comparison I can make is to Buddhist monks chanting a deep, resonant aum—a low chorus rolling across the prairie, interrupted every so often by a sharp, high-pitched cackle.

Then the cackle of another bird.

Another answers.

Another begins displaying.

And suddenly a prairie that appeared almost empty only minutes earlier is alive.

The sound is extraordinary in part because of how far it travels. Male prairie-chickens gather on traditional display grounds called leks—or booming grounds—and their low-frequency booming can carry more than a mile across open country on the right morning.

As the light grew stronger, the birds themselves became almost unbelievable.

Bright orange air sacs inflated along their necks.

Long feathers rose above their heads.

Feet stamped against the ground.

Males turned, rushed, challenged one another, cackled, boomed, and returned again to the elaborate ritual taking place across the grass. The orange air sacs amplify the booming display, while elongated neck feathers—the pinnae—rise above the head.

This was not simply a bird standing in a field.

It was a performance.

And we weren't watching it from somewhere far away.

While the main dance played out in front of the blind, random stragglers perched on top of it.

Birds moved around us.

The booming surrounded us.

For a little while, the blind felt less like something placed on the prairie and more like something the prairie had simply absorbed.

That morning changed the way I understood the landscape.

Because once you become fascinated with an animal like the Greater Prairie-Chicken, another question eventually follows:

The answer is more complicated than simply saving grass.

A booming ground needs openness. The males choose relatively short vegetation where their displays can actually be seen. But nearby, hens need taller vegetation for nesting. Across the rest of the year, prairie-chickens need still other kinds of structure for raising young, finding food, and seeking cover.

A prairie-chicken does not need every acre of prairie to look the same.

That is where fire enters this story.

Burn part of a grassland and grazers are drawn toward the fresh growth that follows. Neighboring unburned areas receive less grazing and become taller. Burn a different patch later and the pattern shifts again.

Fire and grazing together can create a moving mosaic across the prairie—different heights, different densities, different stages of growth existing beside one another. Greater Prairie-Chickens can use those different structures for booming, nesting, raising young, foraging, and finding cover.

From a distance, we might see one enormous field of grass.

The bird experiences something much more complicated.

And that may be one of the most important things the Greater Prairie-Chicken can teach us about prairie.

We have a human tendency to associate health with consistency.

But prairie ecology is built around disturbance.

The landscape becomes uneven.

And wildlife has spent generations learning how to live inside those differences.

That matters because there is far less prairie available to be different than there once was. Minnesota’s Greater Prairie-Chickens are now concentrated largely in western and northwestern Minnesota, particularly along the eastern edge of the Red River Valley. Long-term monitoring also shows how closely the bird’s future remains tied to the amount and arrangement of grassland on the landscape.

Which brings me back to that morning.

Then the booming started.

The orange sacs appeared.

The dancers took their places.

And an animal I had spent so much time wanting to see suddenly became real only yards away.

It is difficult to experience something like that and look at an empty stretch of prairie the same way again.

Because it isn't empty.

There are stories happening out there before sunrise.

There are booming grounds where a sound older than any road crossing that prairie still rolls through the grass.

There are strange orange flashes in the first light.

There are dances taking place on patches of ground most people will pass without ever knowing what happens there.

And sometimes understanding a landscape begins with being fortunate enough to sit quietly inside it—

and listen.

Find it in Nature™.