Greater Prairie Chickens at Taberville Prairie - MO

Zach recently (April 1) had a chance to view prairie chickens booming at Taberville Prairie just south of Clinton, MO. You may have read an article recently about these native birds in the Missouri Conservationist magazine last month or you can read this blog post . Greater prairie chickens are a state endangered species and they estimate only 500 birds are left in the state due to the loss of short grass prairies. Resource Scientists (MDC) that work in my office are involved with a long-term recovery effort where they are trapping and putting radio transmitters on these birds both in MO and in KS. Trapping has been underway in Kansas for a few weeks now and those birds are being relocated to a few MDC managed prairies in MO. I took this video when I was helping with a day of trapping on Taberville. You will see the traps and fencing in the video, but none of the birds walked into a trap that day. We just got to enjoy the show and it was my first time to see this natural event called "booming." The area that these birds do this every year is called a "lek" and we were sitting in a blind that was previously set up about 50 yards from the birds. They were already booming when we arrived at 6:20am that morning in the dark!! The males do this for several weeks in late March/early April and wait for the females to show up on the lek. Then breeding occurs and it is all over. I hope you enjoy this video and even better, get a chance to view this some day for yourself. Hopefully this recovery effort by MDC will take hold and these birds will become much more abundant like they once were in Missouri !!

Here is a more recent news story (4.4.08) about this recovery effort and nearly every person shown in this slideshow works in my office at Clinton. When you go to this link, click on "view slideshow" and the narrated story starts playing.

Here is another video of prairie chickens booming that was taken by someone else in MDC. Thought you might enjoy this one as well.