Welcome to a 5 part series focusing on the world’s of the Attwater’s Prairie chicken – one of the world’s most endangered birds. Follow us through our egg incubation in April and see what it takes to try and recover a species.
"Booming" male Attwater's Prairie Chicken
The Attwater’s Prairie Chicken is a native Texas bird that is brown with strong black bars and a short, round black tail. They are sexually dimorphic, meaning that males and females have a different appearance. The males have elongated feathers called pinnae at the back of their head and large orange air sacs on their neck that are inflated during their mating display, called “booming”. The tail of a male Attwater’s Prairie Chicken is solid black, while the tail of a female is black with brown bars. On average, they are about 17 inches long and weigh between 1.5 and 2.5 pounds. In the wild, adult Attwater’s Prairie Chickens live approximately two to three years, in captivity they can live to about seven years old. Their diet consists mostly of insects early on; as they get older they begin to eat prairie grasses, seed, and plants as well.
Attwater’s Prairie Chickens (Tympanuchus cupido attwateri) are members of the order Galliformes, family Phasianidae, subfamily Tetraoninae (grouse and relatives), and genus Tympanuchus (prairie chickens and sharp-tailed grouse). The Attwater’s prairie chicken is considered to be one of three subspecies of the Greater Prairie Chicken which also includes the extinct Heath Hen (Tympanuchus cupido cupido) and the Greater Prairie Chicken (Tympanuchus cupido pinnatus).
The Attwater’s historic range includes millions of acres of the coastal prairies of southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana. As a result of habitat loss due to farming, industrialization, and pollution, they are currently restricted to two small prairie reserves, The Attwater’s Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge (APCNWR) and The Nature Conservancy’s Texas Prairie Preserve (TNC) and one area of private land near Goliad, Texas.
I visited the refuge outside of Sealy this past weekend and applaud everyone’s efforts in trying to bring this bird back from the brink. I’d like to volunteer at the refuge and look forward to the second weekend in April when they have the festival!
Looking forward to learning more about them and glad I found this post.