Animal Behavior - Photo Essay
Radio Tagging
Texas A&M graduate students radio tag lesser prairie chickens in Yoakum and Cochran Counties, often on the property leased by the June Leland Wildlife Foundation. By triangulating the location of the tagged birds, the researchers learn how far the birds range each day, what microhabitat they prefer, and what time of day the birds are most active. The research is done under the guidance of Dr. Noah Selvy, who worked for decades to “save” the Attwater’s Prairie Chicken on the Texas coastal prairie.
The June Leland Wildlife Foundation’s executive director, David Crum, and his wife Kay often run into the researchers when they are on the Foundation’s leased ranch and have often been invited along when the researchers set up their “dropnets.” The researchers park a vehicle next to a rope that is connected to the nets. When a bird walks underneath the nets, the rope is pulled, and the nets fall, trapping the birds. The researchers extricate the birds and put them into a small cloth sack and carry them back to the vehicle. There the researchers attach the radio transmitter backpacks on the birds, weigh them, band them for later sight identification, and then release them. After a few birds are trapped, the rest become warier, and the trapping becomes harder to accomplish (that day.) After a week or two of tagging, the birds become too wary to trap, and the traps are moved.
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Photos taken by David and Kay Crum
A four-wheel drive vehicle can go almost anywhere on the sanddunes. As long as a vehicle does not use the same path more than a few times, little permanent damage occurs to the vegetation. The Crums' jeep is stripped down for easy egress!
From a distance the dropnets look like filigree teepees covering several hundred square feet.
Since the birds use the same "booming grounds" year after year, they do not deviate from their expected actions even when the nets are present. They work their way in from the surrounding landscape to come to the more open areas where they will display. The researchers only have to watch for a brief time to figure out where to put up the nets after that day's activity finishes around 10 a.m. The nets are erected during the middle of the day for the next day's trapping.
Sometimes the birds use the nets to perch on to survey the booming grounds, and they have been known to land on the researcher's vehicle for the same purpose.
The birds are handled as gently as possible, but a few feathers always seem to come loose. Since the birds come to the booming ground before daybreak, the birds are often caught when there is only a glimmer of sunrise on the horizon.
After being held for a minute or two, the birds settle down, especially when held close to the chest.
Kay Crum holds a bird while it is being processed. The radio transmitter can be seen in front of the bird's face. It will end up on the bird's back before it is released.
The bird is kept half in the cloth bag during part of the processing. The long antennae of the radio transmitter is easily seen in this photograph.
The Crums often camp in the dunes. David sets up a mobile office - a laptop and a card table in a tent, so he can continue his business as a land manager even when he is in the remote sandylands of Yoakum County.
If something disturbs the birds, they suddenly leave the lek - taking flight for a few hundred yards and then dropping back to the ground.
After the birds have finished booming for the day, a visitor to the region might spot some of the plentiful mule deer of the region.
If a visitor drives around the dunes for a few hours, they might spot some of the prairie chickens out foraging for grass and weed seeds.
The birds will come back to the booming grounds near sunset.