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Photo by David Bowser Loud and Clear: Doug Holt and Hugh Metcalfe check the radio collar on a female lesser prairie chicken they trapped before releasing it on a ranch south of Pampa. Chicken Dance Grad student studies lesser prairie chicken In the breaks along the North Fork of the Red River south of Pampa, Doug Holt sits in his pickup as male prairie chickens begin their mating dance in the predawn glow of a cold, windy April morning.
Holt, a graduate student in the College of Agri- cultural Sciences and Natural Resources at Texas Tech University, is in the first stages of a three-year study of the lesser prairie chicken in the Texas Panhandle. "The study started out this year," Holt says. "There's this study and a very similar study in Yoakum County." Holt says they are studying the breeding season ecology of the lesser prairie chicken, a bird on the verge of extinction. He says they think the problem is young birds not making it to breeding age. He says they will catch some males and look at male habitat use, but the most important part of the project is to catch the hens and to look at where they're nesting and which habitats are successful for nesting. They'll also count, track and tag the young chicks when they are hatched. Holt says they'll study how the chicks are surviving between hatching and the first breeding period. "That's the main thing," Holt says. "If you can get more birds in the breeding period, particularly female birds, then the population should come back." The study's main goal is to figure out what can be done to help the birds with their reproductive success, he says, and give the landowners in the area some management options. Holt and his research assistants are covering three counties in the Texas Panhandle: Gray, Lipscomb and Hemphill. They are watching four leks in Gray County and three in Lipscomb County. He's still scouting Hemphill County, but he's found two. He says those aren't all the leks in the counties. Those are just the leks that they're working on. Holt says that there seem to be fewer birds in the leks in this area of the northeastern Panhandle than the leks in shin oak of Yoakum County along the New Mexico state line on the Texas South Plains. The booming or mating ground appears to be bigger in this area than in Yoakum County, but the numbers of birds seem to be a little bit fewer, he says. "It may be that there are more leks here than there are in Yoakum County," Holt says He says habitat may be more available here because the area isn't as dominated by the shin oak. Holt says he's averaging about nine birds per lek in this area, while the Yoakum County study is averaging about twice as many. "They're getting close to 20 birds per lek down there," he says. Holt says there's been a lot of research in Kansas. One of those studies indicates the female birds don't like things sticking up above ground, such as windmills or pumpjacks or towers. The males don't seem to care where they are, Holt says. "We've seen leks under windmills," he says. "Windmills don't seem to bother them." While there is literature that indicates farming may be a detriment to the small birds, Holt says he's gotten reports from landowners of up to 100 birds feeding on center pivot crop circles here each morning. Holt says, however, that the rangeland is an absolute must for the birds. He says they can't live in cropland because they can't nest. "They nest on rangeland," he says. He says they are compatible with cattle. All of Holt's study areas are on private land. He says that when he started, he was told by his habitat diversity coordinator, Heather Whitlock at Tech, that they are out here working for the landowners. "This research is for these landowners," Holt says. "Everything Texas Parks and Wildlife does is for these landowners." He praises the landowner with whom he's worked. "We're fortunate to have some really good landowner cooperators with us on this project," Holt says. "They've been very accommodating and very helpful to us, and they seem excited about the project." E-mail
comments about this story Posted: April 17, 2008
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