Prairie Chickens in Illinois
The Illinois Audubon Society sponsored a trip to Southern
Illinois, near Effingham, in Jasper County to observe Greater
Prairie Chickens, Northern Harriers, Short-eared Owls and
Woodcock. The leaders were Vern Kleen and Scott Simpson.
We met up with Vern and the rest of the group at 4pm in the
parking lot of the Effingham Hampton Inn and the whole group
drove over to the sanctuary. We met Scott Simpson, the refuge
manager, there. We were kind of early and stood around and
waited for a while until sunset. We watched about 10 harriers
(including a couple of beautiful males) flying around and then,
just about the time the harriers vanished, the short-eared owls
(>5) came up. It was pretty spectacular. We speculated on what
it must be like being a vole in the field we were watching. They
must lead lives of constant terror. There was always something
up there that wanted them for lunch. During the day, it's
Harriers. At night, it's Short-eared Owls. When one predator
shuts down, the other one starts up...nothing more than a shift
change.
Since we still had some light, we hustled over to a spot where
there were several Woodcock and we got to hear them in action,
both "peenting" and doing their flight display.
We all met again on Saturday at 4:30am, causing a very unexpected
rush at the front desk of the hotel and were off again. We
parked about 1 mile north of the refuge and set our scopes up
focusing on the area that Scott indicated, about a quarter of a
mile away in a farmer's field.
The sun had not risen yet and all we could see were brown spots
moving and a sound similar to what you get when you blow across
the top of a bottle. Then, the sun rose, at our backs.
As the
light got better, we started seeing more and more. There were
about 8 cocks stomping around the lek, each in his own roughly
100 sq. yd. courting territory. They kept displaying at each
other, rushing back and forth, raising their pinnae and inflating
their yellow saks. There was one spot, where 3 territories came
together, where these guys just kept stomping around and trying
to intimidate each other. At one point, an early hen showed up
and she seemed somewhat indifferent to the attention being
focused on her by at least 3 different males. She eventually
flew away.
This was not a bad way to watch prairie chickens. The
traditional method is to hike out to a blind at 4am and sit there
until the chickens leave, as late as 8 or 9am. While you get
great looks, you also are confined to the blind for a long time.
However, driving up, putting up some scopes, listening and
watching from afar ain't too bad. You don't get the full
experience, but you get to sleep in and do some other stuff when
you've had your fill.
I learned some interesting natural history about Greater Prairie
Chickens while we were standing around out there:
The leks are not necessarily on sanctuary property. The lek we
were at was actually on a farmers field, primarily in a hayfield.
They seem to like short grass, a lack of nearby trees and a high
spot for their leks.
We also heard some cackling. This happens sometimes because a
hen will appear and the birds will immediately cackle and fly
from one side of their territory to the other so that the hen
will know which cock has the biggest territory. This lucky
fellow actually winds up with more than half of the pairings.
The population in Illinois is terribly low, only about 100
individuals. There appear to be several reasons, including, of
course, habitat loss and a lack of genetic diversity. But also
apparently a high contributing factor is the presence of
Ring-necked Pheasant. They engage in egg dumping and their eggs
hatch
a day or so before the chickens'. And since the chicken's
abandon the nest almost immediately after the young hatch, the
chicken eggs are abandoned.
The pheasants are not too choosy about where they dump their
eggs. The refuge experimented with making fake nests with plain
old golf balls. In a few days, they found pheasant eggs.
After a period of very intensive control of the pheasants,
involving fake nests and taking both pheasant cocks and hens,
they have virtually eliminated the pheasants as a problem. And
they have now imported a few Kansas chickens to give the Illinois
population a little new blood. They feel that things are
improving.
We exhausted ourselves watching the chickens and drove back to
the field where we saw the owls the night before. We took a walk
and almost immediately, at least 5 flushed and flew around. It
was spectacular. It was full daylight by this time and we were
able to really study the owls, see the wrist marks and watch the
flight.
We joked about the fact that we were all pretty much sated and it
wasn't even 8am yet.
We spent the rest of the day looking for ducks at Newton Lake and
at the ashpit of the nearby power station.
Total birds for the trip...60; Total lifers, 1; Total RSLWTT
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4
(RSLWTT = Really spectacular looks, worth the trip) |
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