The Festival

April 17, 2010
Llano Estacado
Milensand, New Mexico
5:00-8:00 am

The Lesser Prairie Chicken Festival

Wow, what an experience! I will mainly focus on the actual LPC portion of the trip and not so much on all of the other activities. However, I must award credit where credit is deserved. I was unsure about the trip, how great the courtship performances would be, would the people there be nice, and where the hell was Milensand? Well, I have to say, one could easily overlook the "town" of Milensand if they sneezed too hard, but the people there were delightful, and the LPC displays were amazing.

Now, for what we have all been waiting for, the event we all came to see, the thing that our entire class has been working towards...male LPCs strutting their stuff for a bunch of chicks (well technically hens)! To describe this account to you, I will be telling it as I wrote it in my journal with inserts of my current thoughts.

Thoughts on our way there:

Where is this place? I really hope it doesn't rain while we are there. Jenny and Eileen are crazy for eating that Mexican candy! Why must I be so tired? Hopefully this will be fun.

Thoughts on the drive to the leks:

This ought to be interesting. Why is our driver leaving the rest of the vans? Where are we going? Oh Lord, he got turned around. I hope this doesn't make us late to see the LPCs and mess everything up! Phew, we're here and the chickens are out yet. Now, to sit and wait.

Notes from journal:

5:40 am-1st LPC calls heard

5:55 am-1st LPC seen (male)

The noises that these chickens make is almost indescribable. There are so many calls that these males make! They use their air sacs to make one noise, use their feet to make a scratching noise, and (I am assuming) use their mouths to make a cry that almost mimics a gull (and yet also sounds a bit like "bock, bock" to me)

Movements:

The most common is to bob their heads up and down in short, precise movements while the inflate their air sacs. When they do this, their behinds are in the air and they fan out their tail feathers which make a rattling sound that to me, closely resembles a Rattlesnake's rattle. Their Pinnae feathers are also up and in full display. They will rotate their bodies every couple of "puffs" (of their air sacs) or strut a few steps.

2 males that are close to us are constantly getting too close for the other one's comfort. When this happens, one of the males will crouch down preparing to jump. They make different noises at each other and once they have off, they go about "puffing" again.

6:20 am - some females have shown themselves

It is very difficult to to see the females because they are so well camouflaged. It is interesting to me because unlike many other animals, the male LPCs do not appear aggressive to either the females nor towards other males. They will certainly assert themselves when there is a female around but otherwise do not try to approach or mount her. I suppose it is because the female gets to choose and therefore all the males can do is display themselves as best as possible when she's around. Now the lack of aggression towards other males surprises me. When one male gets too close to another male they merely have a standoff; no physical contact is observed. Violence is the case for many animals but for the LPC, it seems unnecessary.

Side note:

I did at one point see two males actually come in contact with each other but other than that, I witnessed no physical contact what so ever.

Topography:

The area in which their leks are is very open and exposed with most of the shrubbery not more than 1/2 a foot tall. There are some thin grasses sporadically that stand at probably 2 feet but nothing taller. The ground is hard and covered with rocks. This area was once used for an oil derrick.

6:45 am

Everything has been relatively quite for the past 10 mins. Either some have left or they're all hunkered down.

Movements Cont'd:

They will run in straight lines

Jump up in the air and flutter their wings

When courting a female they will bow (Never got to witness)

They will hop/jump around

They will also remain entirely still

I see one pruning his feathers

I think these LPCs are not very happy because there is not a great turnout of females. I wonder if it is due to all the rain and windy weather we've been experiencing lately. Thank goodness it's not raining now.

Colorings/Markings:

Brown bodies with white striping

Yellow/orange sections around/one the head

Orange/Red sacs

Questions:

Do the males come back to the same place every year?

Do the males have the same lek as the year before?

How long does this event go on? (Months, days?)

What defines a lek? (I see no physical boundaries)

Why can I not put what is in my head on paper??? (Referring to my lack of drawing skills)

And there we are: the Prairie Chicken courtship as I experienced it. I had a great time and it was definitely worth the wind and the rain to see these males strut their stuff. I do wish however that we had been able to see more displays which I think would have occurred if more females had shown up. Oh well, it was a great experience and I now understand what Dr. T meant when she said that the LPC's call was almost unworldly.

Are you down with the LPC?

April 14, 2010
2:20-5:00
Museum of Texas Tech University-
Natural Science Research Laboratory

I'm not sure how to begin recounting the experience I had this past Wednesday. It was absolutely amazing to be inside the NSRL with Dr. Nancy Micntyre educating our class. I suppose I should start by explaining why we were there. The museum's NSRL has an extremely important duty, to catalog a vast number of animal species and to preserve their "representations". Our main target was to view the area that stores the bird representations. All the specimens are organized in very sterile white containers that contain multiple trays with numerous bird representations. A representation is what they term anything that identifies with the bird, it could be a bird that has been stuffed and preserved, a skeleton, or perhaps just a portion of a skeleton. All of these "rep.s" are preserved to near perfection so that, if stored properly, they can last an eternity. Each specimen has an ID tag which usually states the name of the bird species, the scientific name, and the date which it was either found or brought to the laboratory (I'm not sure). For the skeletons to be cleaned, the lab employs flesh-eating beetles whose handy work perfectly cleans the bones.

I did not catch the number, but the museum's collection of avian and insect specimens was nothing in comparison to the collection of mammalian specimens. However, that is not to say that the bird collection is small, in fact, the NSRL has the 2nd largest bird collection in the entire state of Texas, second only to Texas A&M. One of the first things that Dr. Micntyre explained to us was that they collect more than just one specimen of every species because, like humans, each individual is different and it represents the biological diversity of this world. The birds are all organized according to taxonomy, not by alphabetical, which means that they are categorized in groups such as: song birds, owls, birds of paradise, etc. The NSRL's collection dates back to approximately 1866, that is some good preservation work!

Some of the birds that we got to see were: Golden Eagles- absolutely enormous creatures with huge talons, apparently a lot of Indian headdresses used to be made from the Golden Eagle's tail feathers, we also saw a Toucan- who's bill was actually quite lite, and a Quetzal- very beautiful and the national bird of Costa Rica (a country to which I will be traveling to this summer so hopefully I will be able to see one alive and in full display :) ). And of course, we saw the Prairie Chickens.

There were 2 Lesser Prairie Chickens and 1 Greater Prairie Chicken which had been stuffed in 1878 and was still in remarkable condition.
Notes about the LPC:
~The "barring" fades from the top of the chest to the bottom
~The Pinnae feathers are the feathers around the ears and males use those as display during courtship
~Their feet have a slight webbing between the toes (much like humans do)

Note of interest:
~The Audubon Society's symbol is the egret because during 1800s, the women's hat industry claimed the lives of so many of the birds that they almost went extinct.

It was a great experience and I feel very privileged that Dr. Micntyre was able to provide us with such a great tour. Now on to the Lesser Prairie Chicken Festival!

Planting Trees

March 31, 2010
L^3
2:20-5:00

Last Wednesday we had the privilege of planting trees at Lubbock Lake Landmark. There were around 22 trees but because of our time limit we were not able to plant all of them and will hopefully be able to plant the rest this coming Wednesday. The Girls' Team and Nick planted 4 trees. :) All of the trees we planted seemed to be in a different soil composition. One was extremely rocky, one was regular soil underneath grass, one was semi rocky, and the other was very rich (I'm assuming it was because it was located where a burn pile had been). After we had dug the hole big enough to accommodate the roots we would fill the hole back up with dirt and then create a rain ring around the tree so that whenever it rained, the trees could get as much of the water as possible. Once they were planted and the ring formed, we would soak the ground with water; we were told that no matter what kind of tree or shrub or bush it is, for the first year, they should be watered diligently. The trees we planted were Soapberrys and Hackberrys. According to thearborday.com the Soapberry is very well suited to Lubbock; it tolerates wind, drought, and infertile soils easily and is also native to this region. The Hackberry is also native and can exist in a wide variety of soils and temperatures. The Landmark definitely did their research with these two trees and I hope that 20 years from now I can come back to the L^3 and see these trees in their full glory.