Several fights broke out this morning on the Lesser Prairie-chicken booming ground.
The guys were squaring off against each other...
While the cows grazed peacefully in the background...
Some dive-bombing even happened in the maylay...
Enough to scare some likely suitors away...
Males strutted, posed, chased, and fought, drawing feathers in trying to show off to very un-interested hens who stood by enjoying the show. Life at the lek is sure full of life right now! The hens will typically breed one time at a lek with their lucky mate and then start the egg-laying process over a period of a couple of weeks. Once there are about a dozen eggs in a nest, which will likely be within a mile of that lek where they bred, the hen will start incubating. Chickens at the lek are very tolerant of some disturbance, such as curious humans staring through holes in blinds. The real issue with disturbance of prairie chickens is the occurrence of tall structure where the hens nest. They won't nest near tall structures such as wind turbines as seen way in the background of the "cow and chicken" picture. The more transmission lines, oil field operations, roads, trees, wind towers, homesteads and other things that fragment the grasslands, the fewer hens will be nesting there. That's just a factor of eons of time with chickens developing habits favoring survival of young from predators who like to perch on tall structures such as trees. The most significant rule of evolution is natural selection and it is so evident in the behavior of these prairie birds who demonstrate the principle so well in their nesting preference and subsequent success.
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