Saturday 8 April 2017

Day 3 Texas

Today we left Huntsville at 4-30 am if you please and drove south to the Attwater Prairie Chicken Reserve. As our planning suggested we arrived in time for the beginnings of proceedings at 7am.
The beginnings?

I guess i should start at the beginning with some information about this Reserve;

Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge is one of the largest remnants of coastal prairie habitat remaining in southeast Texas.

It is home to one of the last populations of the critically endangered Attwater's prairie-chicken, a ground-dwelling grouse of the coastal prairie ecosystem. 

Formerly occupying some six million acres of coastal prairie habitat, the Attwater's prairie-chicken was once one of the most abundant resident birds of the Texas and Louisiana tall grass prairie ecosystem. 

The prairies they knew extended along the Gulf Coast from Corpus Christi, Texas, north to the Bayou Teche area in Louisiana and inland some 75 miles. Grasses of many species waved in the winds including little bluestem, Indiangrass, and switchgrass.

Acre by acre, coastal prairies diminished as cities and towns sprouted up, industries grew and expanded, and farmers plowed up native grasslands for croplands or tame pasture. Suppressing prairie fires also allowed brush species to invade prairies.

Like fish out of water, the Attwater's prairie-chicken had nowhere to go. By 1919, it disappeared from Louisiana. By 1937, only about 8,700 individuals remained in Texas, signaling the end of hunting for a once common game bird. The bird was listed as endangered in 1967 and in 1973 the Endangered Species Act provided immediate protection for this seriously declining bird. 

Presently, less than 200,000 fragmented acres of coastal prairie habitat remain, leaving the birds scattered among two Texas counties. The refuge is one of a handful of national wildlife refuges managed specifically for an endangered species; however, recovery activities for this imperiled bird and management of its declining ecosystem go beyond the refuge's boundaries.

And here is some info about the bird;
Greater Prairie Chicken in full display - [obviously not my photo! from Texas State Parks site]
my photo... ok but i was very far away.
here, with imagination, you can see a male chicken in display...

Over a century ago, up to one million Attwater’s prairie-chickens graced the coastal prairies of Texas and Louisiana. Each spring, males gathered to perform an elaborate courtship ritual.

grasslands and wild flowers on roadside
They inflated their yellow air sacs and emitted a strange, booming sound across a sea of grasses. Today, less than one percent of coastal prairies remain and the Attwater’s prairie-chicken has been pushed to the edge of extinction.

The Attwater’s prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus cupido attwateri) is an endangered grouse that is unique to Texas and Louisiana gulf coastal areas. It is a barred brown and tan bird with a short, rounded, blackish tail. It weighs about 1.5 to 2.5 pounds. Check a bird book and you’ll find it is listed as a slightly smaller, darker form of the greater prairie-chicken that lives farther north in tallgrass prairies.

Attracting a Mate
If you visited a lek, it is hard to imagine why the inconspicuous, grass flat attracts a frenzy of activity each year. A lek, or booming ground, is an area typically used year after year for courtship activity. They may be naturally occurring short grass flats or even artificially maintained areas such as dirt roads, or oil well pads.

For males, a lek is their stage. Here, they perform each morning and evening from February through mid-May. Holding their tails erect and wings drooped, they inflate their air sacs, then drop their heads to deflate the sacs with a low sounding "whur-ru-rrr" while stomping their feet extremely fast. Jumps and charges at other males are interspersed throughout this booming activity. It’s hard work to attract a mate.

Nesting
Once the female chooses and breeds with a male, she leaves the lek to nest in a shallow depression on the open prairie, usually within a mile of the booming ground. If her nest is destroyed early in the season, the hen returns to mate again.

The hen lays a dozen eggs and if she’s lucky, they’ll hatch about 26 days later. Only some 30 percent of all nests escape predators that include opossums, skunks, raccoons, coyotes, snakes, and domestic dogs and cats. Less than half the chicks make it to adulthood. Heavy rains can mean even lower nesting success.

Chicks stay with the hen for at least six weeks, dining mostly on nutritious insects. As the chicks grow older, they join the adults in pecking the leaves, flowers, and seeds of prairie plants in addition to insects.

Habitat
Attwater’s prairie-chickens were once found on six million acres of prairie along the Gulf Coast from Corpus Christi, Texas, north to the Bayou Teche area in Louisiana and inland some 75 miles. Grasses and flowering plants of many species waved in the winds including little bluestem, Indiangrass, and switchgrass.


Acre by acre, coastal prairies diminished as cities and towns sprouted up, industries grew and expanded, and farmers plowed up native grasslands for croplands or tame pasture. Suppressing prairie fires allowed brush species to invade the prairies.

Many grasslands species slowly found they had nowhere to go, including the Attwater’s prairie chicken. Concern over the rapidly disappearing habitat prompted the World Wildlife Fund and The Nature Conservancy to purchase about 3,500 acres of prairie in the 1960s. This land was purchased by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1972 and today is the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge. To ensure this species continues to grace the Texas landscape, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge staff manages the refuge for the benefit of this species and have made protecting it and its habitat a top priority.

Status
More than a century ago, the Attwater’s prairie-chicken population was estimated to be up to a million birds. By 1919, the grouse species had disappeared from Louisiana and by 1937 only about 8,700 birds remained in Texas, signaling the end of hunting for a once common game bird. It was listed as endangered in 1967 and in 1973 the Endangered Species Act provided immediate protection. The Attwater’s prairie-chicken is considered one of the most endangered birds of North America.


Now our day coincided with the Prairie Chicken Festival - an annual event hosted by Texas State Parks and the Friends of Attwater - an organisation formed to assist the reserve and attempts to save the species from extinction.

We were pleased to join them on this day for a few very good reasons.

Number 1 was organised tours into a no-go area of the reserve where some of the last remaining cock birds could be seen - albeit at a great distance - doing their dance on a lek to attract a mate. This would have been impossible to do on any other day. And likewise the chances of seeing a wild bird would have been near impossible.
The viewing area over the lek on the short grass prairie plains

Number 2 was the hospitality of the members of the Friends of Attwater and their sponsors who provided refreshments free of charge for us and this was gratefully received. The men there, in particular Jim was very friendly, generous and warm in a way that many Texans are. [It seems despite their politics they are an incredibly generous, polite and hospitable folk.]

Number 3 was the opportunity to enjoy some dance and culture from an engaging young man from a Blackfoot band out of Montana. His dances were inspired in part from the dance of the Greater Prairie Chicken and his culture and its stories. Both the delivery and dance were charming and one could see the similarities between this dancing and Australia's aborigines' corroborees; in particular the dances involving impersonations of animals.



Number 4 was other birds seen; Upland Sandpipers and Eastern Meadowlarks and Crested Caracaras in particular.
Eastern Meadow Lark
Crested Caracara


wetlands within the grassland reserve
Red-eared Slider?
Purple Martin House
Purple Martin
Attwater Prairie Chicken NWR (CTC 004), Colorado, Texas, US
8-Apr-2017 7:00 AM - 1:00 PM
Protocol: Traveling
5.0 kilometer(s)
26 species

Northern Bobwhite  2
Greater Prairie-Chicken  4
Pied-billed Grebe  3
Anhinga  1
Great Blue Heron  1
Great Egret  6
Green Heron  1
White-faced Ibis  25
Turkey Vulture  6
Common Gallinule  4
American Coot  3
Killdeer  1
Upland Sandpiper  20
Mourning Dove  2
Red-bellied Woodpecker  1
Crested Caracara  1
Peregrine Falcon  1
Horned Lark  6
Purple Martin  4
Barn Swallow  6
Northern Mockingbird  1
European Starling  10
Eastern Meadowlark  20
Common Grackle  1
Great-tailed Grackle  6
Brown-headed Cowbird  1

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