Sage grouse were an important part of
this Wyoming ranch kid’s early life. My dad’s place
included a range of sage-covered hills, and on those hills and many
more between the ranch and foothills of the Wind River Mountain
Range, there were thousands of sage grouse we sometimes called sage
hens, or sage chickens.
The Mountain Range Ditch brought
irrigation water to my dad’s fields, separating the near
hills from the lush alfalfa fields and other hay meadows. As a boy
of eight or nine years old, I quickly learned that most of the sage
hens nested in that zone above the ditch and generally close to the
water. Once in a while I would find a nest some 50 to 150 yards
from water, but without exception, all of the hens and their nests
above the ditch were hidden in a clump of sagebrush.
I
learned to spot the hens without disturbing them, and on my
dad’s place there’d be 50 to 100 nests located along a
quarter-mile of ditch. Once my ranch chores were done, I was free
to roam. I found the grouse fascinating, and I’d watch for
signs of hatching. Seeing the chicks or hearing their cheeping
alerted me and I would back off. But I often hid a short distance
away.
I learned that healthy stands of a sagebrush
community include a mix of plants. It is in those healthy stands
that sage grouse chicks find the bugs (read protein), as well as
green vegetation, that chicks need to thrive and grow. But
sagebrush ecosystems are usually dry with sparse vegetation.
Irrigated fields produce a wealth of insects and lush, green
leaves. Sage grouse eat both, but until the ranchers and their
fields came along, the birds did not have access to such wonderful
food sources.
Sometimes I’d see things that
dismayed me. I’d watch a hen lead her brood of six to eight
or even nine fluffy little ones to the ditch. There she would jump
across and cluck for the chicks to follow. The yawning chasm of a
three-foot ditch struck fear into them, and they would cheep in
distress. Her calls would finally overcome the fears of some of
them, and they would try to flutter across.
Only the
strong would make it; the rest floated off down the ditch, to land
who knew where. Then she had a problem with chicks on either side.
I only saw that happen a few times and determined to do
something about it. My folks’ ranch house and barnyard was
about a quarter-mile away, so I went down, found some 8-to-10-inch
boards long enough to bridge the ditch, hauled them to the site and
put them across. Once I had the satisfaction of seeing one old
biddy lead her brood safely to the other side, I knew the bridges
would work.
It was the beginning of my lifelong love of
wild things. There was one other incident that so impressed me I
can picture it yet. One cold but sunny winter day, I was horseback
riding and entered a wide draw. As I rode through snow that was
almost 10 inches high, I noted a large, dark patch in the snowfield
ahead. I was puzzled, and as I rode on and neared the patch, it
suddenly lifted from the ground in a thunder of wings, and flew
away.
It was a great flock of sage grouse cocks, which I
estimated to number between 1,000 and 2,000 birds. Today, no sage
grouse live on that ranch or in those hills where I rode 70 years
ago. Encroaching civilization, housing developments, drought and
disease have all had their impact. Now, a new disease is killing
the birds — West Nile virus. What’s more, energy
exploration and development in critical sage grouse areas all over
Wyoming is helping to drive the grouse toward extinction.
That is already happening with a close relative called
Attwater’s prairie chicken. An estimated million birds had
been reduced to less than 9,000 birds by 1937. Now, only a few
— 10 cocks and 20 hens — are left on one small island
of prairie in Texas. The earliest colonists on the East Coast
wondered at the booming of strange birds — the heath hens.
The last heath hen cock died there in 1932. In the last 20 years,
researchers say sage grouse numbers have dropped by half.
The moral is yours to draw.
Tom Bell is a
contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News
(hcn.org) which he founded in 1970. He lives and writes in Lander,
Wyoming.
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