Smack in the middle of a lek, mating grounds for the Greater Prairie Chicken, I wait away the pre-dawn spring morning. My spot is near a U.S. Forest Service blind on the National Grasslands near Ft. Pierre, South Dakota. A better stage for chicken dancing would be hard to find. Imagine the entire curve of the earth covered in oat-colored grass stubble, not a single tree, a beacon of moonlight in which to assemble the big lens and tri-pod, a prairie pond and beside it totally out of place, a 4' x 8' x 4' box with small rectangular eye holes. That's it. My little house on the prairie.
Only there is no lamp in the window. It is four AM and the sky is black. It's 36 degrees and after two days of heavy rain, the earth is wet. I have never been here before, let alone on a lek, but I can see why some would say it is a sacred place.
Awake from a doze, I step from my vehicle into the silence of the cool, dark sanctuary. In my headlights, the blind is off a quick quarter mile through the slough or a little longer over the gumbo muck. Calculating the possibility of ankle-twisting badger holes in the slough, I hoist the rig over my right shoulder and take a few tentative steps trying to decide.
Through my boot I feel frosty grasses resist and flatten. I look down and in my mind I see the young rattlesnake I photographed yesterday. Recalling skin the color of heat-filled brown dust in which it lay coiled, its glistening black tongue and rattles become a semaphore for "Don't tread on me." Don't worry. I go for the slough.
Slipping through ankle deep water, I have no problem reaching the blind but my pulse is racing. I shine a light inside. No reptiles. Just one small, nonchalant mammal, bright eyes reflecting from a nest of duck down and prairie chicken feathers. A field mouse. It's not much interested in leaving and although the Forest Service says there's room for four, there's just room for me and my rig. And film, coat, vest, gear, water bottle, breakfast bar, batteries, chapstick, Kleenex, camera manual. The mouse has gotta go.
I'm working on the mouse when I hear the first low pitched "Hooo-whuuuh-whoooaaa. OO-oooooooo." 4:45 AM. Then again. Greater Prairie Chickens! Booming! I have never heard this sound before but it can't be anything else. An abnormally deep second note creates the "boom." Within minutes there is a chorus of faint booming outside and by 5:05 AM they are all much closer; I am surrounded! In the dark, I suspend my breathing so as not to give away my position. 00oooooooo---000---oooooooooooooo.
I adjust the tri-pod legs, check the lens settings, run through a mental list, discover I have too much film at the wrong speed left over from yesterday. I listen and wait and bandage my finger where the lens foot and mounting plate have taken a tender bite in the dark. I think about how to stabilize the rig. With a tele-extender, I want to double my focal length to a thousand mm but I don't quite have the mechanics down. Too much play, not enough tension. I think maybe I need to sight a couple mm to the left, twist everything on the ball-head holding the mounting plate until I lacerate my thumbs, then bend it all back a hair to the right and focus. I do. It works! The play is gone. I push my head against the camera and tap the rig with a free finger. Solid. The trick will be to maintain this tension when the light comes up and the birds stand on their heads or strut their stuff.
Through a crack at the top of the door around 6:00 AM I see the first horizontal stroke of rose. It runs the length of the long curve on the east. Below it is dark earth, above is burnished brass. The Painter's been here. Nice work.
From the south side of the blind come a pant and a squeak like an excited dog sighting its master. Squeak? I peek through the rectangular eyeholes one by one. Dark spots on the earth. Moving dark spots. Another. And another. Birds. In and out of the short grass. Ambush! They're sneaking up, but I can see them. Well, almost.
The holes in the blind are for short people and I must plan each move or wrench my back and neck. More waiting. By flashlight I sort gear. In the half-light, there are noises everywhere. Sneakers, squeakers and one grrrreat clucker. En en en en en enen enenenenenenenenen. Whu.
At 6:04 AM the shovelers on the west pond wake up. Too dark for duck photos at this distance. Time for a breakfast bar. It is so quiet, the sound of ripping paper annoys me. A Velcro pocket patch is even worse. I wait. The light changes more slowly than ever before. Pairs of prairie chickens cavort all around the edge of the small pond. One lands in the water and stands booming, like "I meant to do that."
At 7:00 AM the light is not too bad and I get my first focus on the clucker's incredible face and crown feathers. Head held high, feathers fanned, for a chicken he looks pretty dignified. As I'm admiring the "do,” a tangerine tennis ball inflates in the bird's neck and I fire off the offending film. I get a feel for the tension in the rig. Feels good. Solid. I change film, check the film speed.
At 7:15 the light is very good. Clucker's rival walks up facing my direction, opens his beak (I shoot) and speaks. OOoooooooooooooooo-OOO-oooooooooooo. Enenenenenenenen. Stops. Then begins a quick little two-step in place. I shoot. He clucks. I shoot. He bows, plucks the grass. I shoot. Leaps up and falls in a neat little arc. I try to get him mid-air. Lots of chances; like tiddly winks, he repeatedly pops up landing a foot away where he pauses, spies a spot for the next pop-up, rushes over, pops up again, lands with a flop. Crazy chicken.
Then the two of them face off, one on each side of a bent weed, Clucker’s head high, Crazy's low, touching the earth. Like actors in a mirror pantomime exercise, they copy each other exactly. Heads stretch left, then down, then left. Then beak to beak. One raises feathered horns; the other drags his on the ground. A Northern Pintail walks up within a foot and is immediately attacked by Clucker. I shoot into a flurry of feathers. So much for chicken dignity.
Pintail retreats, Clucker scurries back to his exact mark in front of the weed, Crazy leaps again and again, takes a final bow, exits stage left. I want to applaud.
Instead I hear, " Whuh waaa nnnnnnn whirrrrrrr en-en-en-en-en-en-en whrrrrrrrrr weaaaaaah." Then directly over my head, " WHUP!" I duck. The sky is falling! Chuckling, I think of Chicken Little but it's just Crazy on the roof. OOoooooooo--OOO--ooooooooooooo. The boom causes a small reverb inside the blind. This immediately is followed by a little shuffle in place, pata-pat-pat. Pause. Silence. Then clack. Clacka-clack-clack. Claws clacking, individual toes two inches above my head, he shuffles to three of the four corners, booms, and taps out a number. Shuffle clack clack, shuffle clack clack, hop shuffle step, fa-lap, clack clack! Good timing.
I look to the west and see amber grass on the knoll above the pond and a cornflower blue horizon. Willets and yellow-legs probe the shallows on the north. On the right, in last year's rushes is a racket of redwings and frogs. I see the only female prairie chicken of the day immediately outside. What a beauty! She fills the frame. For a few seconds I can only stare at her cocoa eyes. I wonder if she is watching the roof. Crazy, in center stage, surely has the edge over Clucker. I shoot the camera dry and she waits patiently through my excitement while I fumble the film, manage a reload and fire off two dozen more shots at different exposures. Now, that's cooperation.
Suddenly, as if a puppet on a string, she is snatched straight up in a whirrrrrrrrrrrrr and is gone. I look to the south. I see nothing. The others are yanked away by the same puppeteer. Once again, there is total silence. Not a single bird noise. No frogs. No, nothing now except bright light and a warm wind.
It is 9:30 AM. Finger bleeding, thumbs bruised and sore, dent in the forehead, crick in the neck, break in the back, cramp in the leg. I wait awhile, pack up, stretch out, return my little house to the mouse, and hike back to the vehicle. Within 30 seconds of being seated, I am asleep in the wind.
Editor's note: The author has just returned from her 6th annual Greater Prairie Chicken photo trip. Here she recalls her first encounter with this enigmatic prairie species.
Juli Wilcox is an avid digital photographer, free-lance writer and editor retiring from a career in speech pathology and special education program directing in May 2006. Juli is the Executive Editor at NatureScapes.Net.
