DULUTH, Minn. _ We could hear them before we saw them, when the light in the eastern sky was still dim.
It was a sort of cooing sound at first. Then clucks and something like muffled owl hoots. Then a whistle-like whine. And finally the clicking. When the clicking got louder, that's when the action started.
Suddenly, sharp-tailed grouse appeared out of a low-hanging ground fog, first ones and twos running into view and eventually building to an even dozen. All of them with tails up, wings out. All of them males. All of them sex-starved and ready to rumble.
Just south of Solon Springs in Douglas County, the Friends of the Bird Sanctuary and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources set up a tent blind in the exact spot, called a lek, where male sharp-tailed grouse love to dance. The blind is open to the public to reserve, and the dancing will continue nearly every morning through about mid-May.
"That particular lek has been going for at least 40 years, maybe more," said Greg Kessler, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources wildlife biologist. "There were reports years ago of as many as 20 or 30 males on it. It's been down to as few as four. Now it's back up to about a dozen, and that's pretty good. They are hanging in there."
Out of a nearly square-mile of open field here, it's unclear why the grouse pick this exact spot every spring to strut their stuff.
"There's a little rise in the land there. We think it's a combination of visibility and maybe how the sounds resonate. But we really don't know," Kessler said.
Male sharptails gather in open fields like this to attract females in the hope of mating. It's called dancing, but it's much more. There's fighting and calling and squawking and flying and running and stomping and spinning and general mayhem.
And then, as fast as it all starts, it stops. The birds freeze in place, like some unseen referee blew a whistle. Then, with no apparent signal, they all begin again in unison, as if choreographed in practice. Sometimes the entire flock will fly away at once, only to return a few minutes later.
The males often pair off, then square off face-to-face. These mini battles range from violent wing bashing _ with jumping and brutal footwork _ to simply setting down and staring at each other. Sometimes they lay almost prostrate, wings spread, necks stretched, beak-to-beak, just inches apart _ simply staring at each other. They appear too tired to move.
Then it all starts up again. Most of the action is happening just 30-40 feet from the blind.
Early in spring, the show is mostly a guy thing. The hens aren't interested yet and most don't even show up to watch. But slowly now the hens are coming, a few at a time. They'll pick their favorite male to mate with, right there in front of the flock.
It's unclear to us mere humans what the females are looking for, exactly. All the male dancers appear to be pretty close in talent.
After the fog burned off the dancing really got going, and, on what turned into a sunny morning, the males kept going for nearly three hours.
