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Order: Galliformes Family: Phasianidae Chick Type: Precocial (only require parental attendance) This species was once found from the midwest all the way to Wyoming. But market hunting and loss of habitat has drastically reduced their range. Greater Prairie-Chickens are now only found in central wisconsin, northwest Minnesota, eastern North Dakota, central and southcentral South Dakota, central part of Nebraska, eastern Kansas, parts of Arkansas, northeastern Oklahoma, and southern Illinois (less than 100 left in Illinois). Prairie-chickens are omnivorous; their diet consists of insects, flowers, leaves and seeds of prairie plants. Breeding season starts in April, with the males gathering at a booming ground and trying to breed with hens by displaying to them. Hens lay 8 - 17 olive egg with brown spots in a nest hidden in prairie grass. The incubation time is around 23 - 24 days. Chicks fledge in four weeks. There were three subspecies of the Prairie Chicken; one of them, the Health Hen (Tympanuchus c. cupido), is now extinct. Some believe that the Health Hen is actually a separate species from the Greater Prairie Chicken. Unregulated hunting in the early 1900's reduced Greater Prairie-Chicken population to a fraction to what it used to be. Stories of bagging 30 or more chickens per hunter was common during those unregulated times. In 1873, Market hunters sent over 600,000 Prairie-Chickens to meat markets (Johnson 1964). In 1878, Iowa was the first state that imposed regulations on hunting Prairie Chickens (Johnson 1964). The first piece of federal legistion to protect birds and other wildlife from Market hunters was the Lacey Act in 1900, which made transportation of illegally captured or protected animals illegal. By 1945, there were closed seasons for this species in most of the states it is found. Some current problems faced by this species include habitat loss, fragmentation of habitat, and the introduction of Ring-necked Pheasants. Ring-necked Pheasants lay eggs in the nests of Prairie Chickens. The Pheasant chick hatches before the Prairie-Chicken chicks and this causes the hen to leave the nest with the hatched Pheasant chick, thus causing the death of her unhatched clutch. Many of its remaining populations are isolated from each other, which does not allow for gene flow. Please check out USDA Forest Service's Greater Prairie-Chicken (Tympanuchus cupido): A Technical Consrvation Assessment for the Rocky Mountain Region. Also check out the Society of Tympanuchus Cupido Pinnatus, the oldest prairie grouse conservation organization. During their glory days, the society championed the Greater Prairie Chicken protection in Wisconsin and bought over 7,000 acres of habitat. Since those glory days, Wisconsin's population is starting to mirror the trend of the Attwater's Prairie Chicken in Texas. Much work still lay ahead of us. |
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