Sharp-tailed grouse

The sharp-tailed grouse, also known as the sharptail or fire grouse, is a medium-sized prairie grouse. One of three species in the genus Tympanuchus, the sharp-tailed grouse is found throughout Alaska, much of Northern and Western Canada, and parts of the Western and Midwestern United States. The sharp-tailed grouse is the provincial bird of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan.

Taxonomy

In 1750 the English naturalist George Edwards included an illustration and a description of the sharp-tailed grouse in the third volume of his A Natural History of Uncommon Birds. He used the English name "The Long-tailed Grous from Hudson's-Bay". Edwards based his hand-coloured etching on a preserved specimen that had been brought to London from Hudson Bay by James Isham. When in 1758 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the tenth edition, he placed the sharp-tailed grouse with other grouse in the genus Tetrao. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Tetrao phasianellus and cited Edwards' work. The sharp-tailed grouse is now placed in the genus Tympanuchus that was introduced in 1841 by the German zoologist Constantin Wilhelm Lambert Gloger for the greater prairie chicken. The genus name combines the Ancient Greek tumpanon meaning "kettle-drum" with ēkheō meaning "to sound". The specific epithet phasianellus is a diminutive of the Latin phasianus meaning "pheasant".
The greater prairie chicken, lesser prairie chicken, and sharp-tailed grouse make up the genus Tympanuchus, a genus of grouse found only in North America. Six extant and one extinct subspecies of sharp-tailed grouse are recognised:

T. p. phasianellus: the nominate race or northern sharp-tailed grouse is found in Manitoba, northern Ontario, and central Quebec. It is partly migratory.
T. p. kennicotti: the northwestern sharp-tailed grouse is resident from the Mackenzie River to the Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories, Canada.
T. p. caurus: the Alaskan sharp-tailed grouse inhabits north-central Alaska eastwards to the southern Yukon, northern British Columbia, and northern Alberta.
T. p. columbianus: the Columbian sharp-tailed grouse can be found in isolated pockets of native sagebrush and bunchgrass plains of Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and British Columbia.
T. p. campestris: the prairie sharp-tailed grouse lives in Saskatchewan, southeastern Manitoba, southwestern Ontario, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to northern Minnesota and northern Wisconsin. This subspecies coexists with the plains race around the northern Red River Valley and prefers low seral stages of recently converted forests to shrubland.
T. p. jamesi: the plains sharp-tailed grouse makes its home in the northern Great Plains in southern Alberta and Saskatchewan, eastern Montana, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, and northeastern Wyoming. This race lives in the mixed-grass prairie, preferring a mosaic of native grasslands, cropland, and brushy/woody riparian draws, creeks, and rivers for a winter food source above the snow cover as buds and berries.
†T. p. hueyi: the New Mexico sharp-tailed grouse is extinct.
Description

Adults have a relatively short tail with the two central feathers being square-tipped and somewhat longer than their lighter, outer tail feathers giving the bird its distinctive name. The plumage is mottled dark and light browns against a white background, they are lighter on the underparts with a white belly uniformly covered in faint V-shaped markings. These markings distinguish sharp-tailed grouse from lesser and greater prairie chickens which are heavily barred on their underparts. Adult males have a yellow comb over their eyes and a violet display patch on their neck. This display patch is another distinguishing characteristic from prairie chickens as male prairie chickens have yellow or orange colored air sacs. The female is smaller than the male and can be distinguished by the regular horizontal markings across the deck feathers as opposed to the irregular markings on the males deck feathers which run parallel to the feather shaft. Females also tend to have less obvious combs.
Measurements:

Length: 15.0–19.0 in
Weight: 21.0–31.0 oz
Wingspan: 24.4–25.6 in
Distribution

Sharp-tailed grouse historically occupied eight Canadian provinces and 21 U.S. states pre-European settlement. They ranged from as far north as Alaska, south to California and New Mexico, and east to Quebec, Canada. Following European settlement the sharp-tailed grouse has been extirpated from California, Kansas, Illinois, Iowa, Nevada, and New Mexico.

Behavior

Feeding

These birds forage on the ground in summer, in trees in winter. They eat seeds, buds, berries, forbs, and leaves, also insects, especially grasshoppers, in summer. Specific species of grasshopper the sharp-tailed grouse is known to feed on are Melanoplus dawsoni and Pseudochorthippus curtipennis.

Breeding

The sharp-tailed grouse is a lekking bird species. These birds display in open areas known as leks with other males, anywhere from a single male to upwards of 20 will occupy one lek. A lek is an assembly area where animals carry on display and courtship behavior. During the spring, male sharp-tailed grouse attend these leks from March through July with peak attendance in late April, early May. These dates do fluctuate from year to year based on the weather. Johnsgard observed weather delayed lekking of up to two weeks by sharp-tailed grouse in North Dakota. The males display on the lek by stamping their feet rapidly, about 20 times per second, and rattle their tail feathers while turning in circles or dancing forward. Purple neck sacs are inflated and deflated during display. The males use "cooing" calls also to attract and compete for females. The females select the most dominant one or two males in the center of the lek, copulate, and then leave to nest and raise the young in solitary from the male. Occasionally a low-ranking male may act like a female, approach the dominant male and fight him.

Habitat selection

The sharp-tailed grouse is found throughout different prairie ecosystems in North America. They inhabit ecosystems from the pine savannahs of the eastern upper Midwest to the short grass, mid grass, and shrub steppe prairies of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain West. Selection of specific habitat characteristics and vegetation communities is variable among the different subspecies of sharp-tailed grouse. Selection of these specific habitats depends on the quality of habitat available to grouse.
The major habitats used by sharp-tailed grouse, recorded in the literature, are savannah style prairie with grasses dominant and shrub patches mixed throughout, with minimal patches of trees. In fact, Hammerstrom states the taller the woody vegetation, the less of it there should be in the habitat. The savannah style habitat is mostly preferred during the summer and brood rearing months through autumn. This general habitat is used during all four seasons for different features. Habitat selection and usage vary by season with; lekking, nesting, brood rearing, and winter habitat selected and utilized differently.

Lekking habitat

The lek, or dancing ground is, usually made up of short, relatively flat native vegetation. Other habitat types utilized for leks are cultivated lands, recent burns, mowed sites, grazed hill tops, and wet meadows. Manske and Barker reported sun sedge, needle and thread grass, and blue grama on lekking grounds in the Sheyenne National Grassland in North Dakota. The males also select for upland or midland habitat type on the tops of ridges or hills.
Leks surrounded by high residual vegetation were observed by Kirsch et al.. They noticed lek distribution was influenced by the amount of tall residual vegetation adjacent to the lek. Lek sites eventually became abandoned if vegetation structure was allowed to get too high. The invasion of woody vegetation and trees into lekking arenas also caused displaying males to abandon leks. Moyles observed an inverse relationship of lek attendance by males with an increase in quaking aspen within 0.8 km of arenas in the Alberta parklands. Berger and Baydack also observed a similar trend in aspen encroachment where 50% of leks were abandoned when aspen coverage increased to over 56 percent of the total area within 1 km of the lek. Males select hilltops, ridges, or any place with a good field of view for leks. So they can see the surrounding displaying males, approaching females to the dancing ground, and predators.

Nesting habitat

Nesting cover is one of the most important habitat types needed by sharp-tailed grouse hens. Nesting habitat varies widely among the different subspecies of sharp-tailed grouse. Hamerstrom Jr. found the majority of prairie sharp-tailed grouse nests occupied dense brush and woods at marsh edges. Gieson and Connelly reported that Columbian sharp-tailed grouse selected for dense shrub stands with taller, denser shrubs located at the nest site. Plains sharp-tailed grouse selected nest sites with dense residual vegetation and a shrubby component. However, nest sites are usually characterized by dense tall residual vegetation with the presence of woody vegetation either at the nest site or nearby. Goddard et al. state that the use of shrub dominated habitats has not been documented by many other researchers. Goddard et al. found that sharp-tailed grouse hens in Alberta, Canada selected more for shrub steppe habitats in their first nest attempts because of increased concealment provided by the shrubs than the residual grass earlier in the breeding season. Roersma also found that grouse in southern Alberta selected taller, woody vegetation compared to all other habitats assessed, and grouse used this area in greater proportions to available woody habitat. These findings contradict Prose et al., who states that residual vegetation is critical to sharp-tailed grouse nest success due to the early seasonal nesting nature of the grouse.