The Greatest Lesser Prairie Chicken
I sat down on a small fold up stool inside the photography blind to set up my camera gear under the predawn cobalt sky. Within minutes of my arrival and before I could make out anything in the dark, I heard the flutter of wings, a cackle, and then a low booming nearby. The sound pierced directly into my heart. I stopped moving and listened with my eyes closed. I let out a long deep exhale, relieved and amazed at the visceral confirmation of their continued existence. The Lesser Prairie Chickens were back on their lek, a clearing in the shinnery oak or grassland habitat where they dance to attract the females attention.
The single booming became a chorus as more males gathered. I listened as each one announced its arrival. I pressed my palm to the ground and felt the vibration of sound, the drumming of their feet on the ground radiating out through the earth. A force onto itself. The sounds, the feeling, the sensation stirred something ancient in me. A lasso of deep time connecting me to the rhythms of the universe, to the mysteries and joy of the Creator creating through the art of diversity. As the light breached the horizon, I at once I became an observer, a participant, a caretaker, a part of the greater story that is all our story.
Endangered Species Day is May 20 this year and ahead of that I wanted to share this experience with you of what these creatures mean to me.
After years of working to improve their population and circumstances through voluntary measures, the southern populations of Lesser Prairie Chicken Populations in New Mexico and Texas have been recommended and will soon be listed under the Endangered Species Act, a designation I don’t wish for any species. Their populations have been in steady decline due to long-term drought, lack of insect food sources during mating and nesting season, destruction of their habitat from agriculture and energy development (both oil & gas an ill-sighted wind farms), and myriad of other causes.
The Lesser Prairie Chicken Preserve in eastern New Mexico is closed to the public and will remain so for quite some time as biologists, like Grant Beauprez who I profiled in the April 2021 issue of New Mexico Magazine, continue research to understand this species and implement and enforce protections and conservation measures they need to once again thrive.
As a conservation photographer working to share stories of endangered species like these, I am privileged to be given permission to photograph the prairie chickens on their lek and experience one of the great wonders of nature. It’s my honor to share with you this moment I spent with the Lesser Prairie Chickens last April. For all those who remain, may they continue their eternally optimistic dance among disappearing shinnery oak of eastern New Mexico, doing what they have always done to keep their species in existence. May we feel the empathy needed deep within ourselves to help them do so. May their dance pull our hearts back into connection and harmony with nature.
