Tippytaps

Each March and April, male greater prairie-chickens compete for the attention of the females on display grounds that the birds use year after year. These display grounds are called “leks.“ All of the greater prairie-chicken leks in Colorado are on private land. The leks look very much like the surrounding land except vegetation doesn’t grow high on them. Males defend their territory by threatening other males with short runs at each other with tails raised and heads down, but they rarely hurt each other. Their courtship displays consist of leaping and strutting about and stamping their feet with their “horns“ erect and their yellow-orange sacs of skin inflated on the sides of their necks. They utter a deep cooing call, sometimes called booming, that can carry as far as four miles. Photos and video by Wayne D. Lewis, editor of Colorado Outdoors magazine for Colorado Parks and Wildlife.