Catching up - March birding

Wow, a lot has happened in the last month.  Unfortunately it wasn't all birding, but I did get some good birding in when I could.

At the end of March, I went down to the Kellerton area.  My target species: Greater Prairie-Chicken.  Even though I've been involved in prairie-chicken conservation for the last 7 years, I'm a bit embarrassed to admit they were not yet on my life list.  I decided this was the year to fix that, so on a Friday afternoon Mr Pescador and I got in the car and made the trip to Kellerton.

What makes Kellerton so special?  It's an area the Iowa DNR is actively managing for prairie-chickens.  This means they have been hard at work restoring large patches of prairie (imagine that, prairie-chickens prefer open prairie habitat :) ).  As a result, the Kellerton area has some 10,000+ acres of prairie habitat.  And the last couple of years, they have been trapping chickens in Nebraska and releasing them in Kellerton to help add some genetic diversity to the population (and boost their numbers).  So, since it was the start of their breeding season, and there's a known population, Kellerton was my best chance to see these charismatic birds.  If you haven't seen the males' booming dance display, check out this youtube video:

During the breeding season, the birds will gather at a lek - basically an open area where the males can dance and strut their stuff, while the females watch and choose a male to be their mate.

We arrived at Kellerton about an hour before sunset (prairie-chickens do most of their dancing at dawn and dusk).  There were lots of other birds to look at and listen to while waiting for the prairie-chickens to come out.  The Eastern Meadowlarks were back in force, singing their sweet "spring of the year" and chasing each other.

Horned larks were singing from the road edges.

Just before dusk, we spotted a group of chickens fly along a ridge and land out of sight about 3/4 of a mile away to the east.  Consulting my Sportsman's Atlas, I saw there was another gravel road one mile east so we decided to head over there and hopefully find the group.  On the first pass down the road, we didn't spot anything other than some Red-winged Blackbirds.  After about 2 miles, I decided to turn around and head back for the highway.  And wouldn't you know, as we were turning around a group of 6 prairie-chickens scurried across the road in front of us, heading into the cover of corn stubble, with a Ring-necked Pheasant rooster close behind.  I quickly grabbed my binocs and managed to watch 2 of them escape into denser cover.  And then, just like that, they were gone again.

The next day, still smiling about successfully seeing Greater Prairie-Chickens, I decided to try for another "clean-up" species - the Short-eared Owl.  I live less than an hour from the Neal Smith NWR, which has a known population of SEOWs, and yet they were glaringly absent from my life list.  So I picked Mr Pescador up from work and we drove out to the refuge.  While the day before had been warm (upper 60s), a cold front was moving in.  As we neared sunset (the owls usually make their appearance right before dusk to begin hunting), fog started to creep in.

In about 15 minutes, it was thicker than peanut butter (as Yukon Cornelius would say).  There could have been Short-eared Owls flying all around me and I wouldn't know they were there - darn them and their super-stealthy silent flight. :)  That just means I'll have to spend more time out at Neal Smith, with its 5600 acres of habitat and 200+ bird species.