Unusual chickens: the dance of the sharp-tailed grouse

The bird display begins as the sun is nothing but a faint bluish glow on the eastern prairie horizon. Upland sandpipers give their raucous whistles over the short grasses. The musical tinkling of horned larks fills the air. As we walk across the native prairie towards the sharp-tailed grouse blind at Benton Lake National Wildlife Refuge, long-billed curlews and chestnut-collared longspurs join the morning chorus. And then we arrive at the grouse lek and all of that is forgotten. Speechless, we watch the age-old spectacle before us: 28 male sharp-tailed grouse gulping, burbling, and dancing in the faint light of early morning.