Check these out

[mm]

Sage Grouse http://youtu.be/m0M8pZnNlnI

Ruffed Grouse http://youtu.be/l5J_LIyJi7g

Sharpe-Tailed Grouse http://youtu.be/zvoZkjuYD54

Spruce Grouse http://youtu.be/WMrDVBvFAd4

Greater Prairie Chicken http://youtu.be/lw773cr_jXk

Bob White http://youtu.be/Zwqz1GnkDs4

Ringnecks pheasants (fighting) http://youtu.be/xiIewaWc-M8
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[nhachman]

Cool videos, thanks for sharing.

[Ghosted3]

Dunno why, but the sage grouse one made me giggle. Thank you for sharing.

Corry

[frosso]

Very cool!

[Bberry20]

Pretty cool videos. Thanks for sharing.

[TRoberts]

Outstanding!

[fishvik]

Dunno why, but the sage grouse one made me giggle. Thank you for sharing.

Corry

When they get to doing their thing on the lek (strutting ground) they are a riot to watch. I went out this spring before sunrise and saw some males in my headlights so I pulled off a two track just north of town. By a half hour after sunrise I was completely surrounded by between 45 to 50 males all going at it. The booming was pretty loud.
When I was in college one of my wildlife profs told me about an experiment he did with ruff grouse and their drumming logs for his thesis. The males are highly territorial, so he put a mirror on a log he knew one male was using and built a small blind to observe what happened. He said that that little guy almost drummed himself to death trying to get his mirror image off the log. He even attacked the mirror a couple of times. Males in lust no matter what the species.

[bonasa]

Fishvik that is a very effective way to trap ruffs in the spring with a mirror trap. We use clover traps in the fall, pretty simple trap and ruffs would rather walk than fly over obstacles so we capitalize on that and get a good number for telemetry studies each fall.

[fishvik]

Fishvik that is a very effective way to trap ruffs in the spring with a mirror trap. We use clover traps in the fall, pretty simple trap and ruffs would rather walk than fly over obstacles so we capitalize on that and get a good number for telemetry studies each fall.

Bonasa, Where are doing your telemetry studies and what type of distances (range) are your ruffs covering in a year?

[fishvik]

I went out to the field today to do riparian inventory and there on the road into the allotment was a male blue grouse in full mating display, fanned tail and yellow neck patches exposed. He had no interest in us and wouldn't move out of the road. When we inched forward he moved out ot the way but was right back out in tracks of the road when we passed. This whole episode lasted more than 15 minutes. What a crack up he was. It kind of reminded me of the commercials for male enhancment about things lasting more than four hours should seek medical attention. It was interesting he was doing the display this late in the nesting season. I didn't see and hens around him and later this morning I saw quite a few females with broods that were almost fully tail feathered and were flying.