Grouse strut stuff in spring spectacle

Party-like dancing, strutting and squabbles for the attention of females is underway throughout the West this month, not just in taverns, but also in the grasslands and sagebrush landscapes.

Prairie grouse are doing their thing. The male sharp-tailed grouse are dancing on leks, making a sound resembling little jackhammers as their feet bounce and feathers rattle.

Sage grouse males are strutting, billowing out air sacs in their chest and making sounds resembling blobs plunking into vats of oil.

It’s going on in northcentral Washington, Eastern Oregon, Eastern Montana and the south half of Idaho.

Sharptail drumming started before dawn on the rolling prairie at Benton Lake National Wildlife Refuge 10 miles north of Great Falls this week.

The refuge includes one of northcentral Montana’s largest sharp-tailed grouse leks – a flat spot where males gather as part of a ritualized courtship dance that occurs at the same location each spring.

For the male grouse, it’s an intense effort for the opportunity to mate with hens, and just a few of them will win.

“If it were a hill, it would be king of the hill,” said Bob Jordan, a biological technician at the refuge.

The dance show is also entertaining to watch, and more visitors are applying for the chance to witness the gathering of up to 75 male grouse from a seat in the “grouse house.” The 8-by-12-foot wooden blind built in 1990 gives them a front-row seat to one of the most unusual courting rituals on the prairie.

Visitors are so close to the action that no spotting scope is required, with the birds, running on hormones, oblivious to the voyeurs.

“It’s unlike just about any other courtship routine you can think of,” Jordan said.

The grouse house is the only place that he knows of in the region where bird watchers can sit on folding chairs sipping coffee while clandestinely viewing the dancing fools, if they’re willing to arrive before dawn and have a reservation.

Interest has grown so much the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was forced to implement a lottery system a few years ago to choose who gets to use the hut, and the dancing show is booked for a year. Six seats are available in the blind on weekends in April and May.

Winners of the grouse house lottery are treated to a prairie peep show.

They stomp their feet up to 20 times a second and turn in a circle. With their heads held low, they cock their tail feathers and sprint across the lek with their wings spread wide, looking like little fighter jets.

They also inflate and deflate purple air sacs on their neck creating an occasional boom.

Only the males dance in the communal breeding ground, and the dancing and vocalizing are a broadcast to females that they’re the best males out there.

Dominant males control the center, and less dominant males try to butt in, with beak-to-beak face-offs occurring between two and sometimes three birds.

A deep pigeon-like cooing, a cross between a gobble and gurgle, is another sound on the grouse lek, along with higher-pitched whistles.

Only a few males on a given lek will win the majority of matings, which drives the intensity of the moves and calls and also leads to continual fighting, according to Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Birds mate in the vicinity of the dancing grounds after which hens move to thicker grass cover to nest and typically laying about a dozen eggs.

Sharp-tailed grouse are faring better than their cousin, the sage grouse, which has been the object of new protections by federal and state agencies to protect populations that have declined over the years, Jordan said.

But the loss of native habitat is a concern for sharp-tailed grouse as well, Jordan said.

Outdoors editor Rich Landers contributed to the story by Karl Puckett of the Great Falls Tribune.