General Description: Medium-sized grouse weighing 700-800 g. Total length 38-41 cm. Sexes and plumages similar throughout year. In adults, plumage is uniformly barred with alternating brown and buffy white bands. Upperparts are darker and more richly colored than underparts. Chin and throat largely unmarked. Tail short, rounded and brownish black. Males display conspicuous yellow eye-combs and dull red gular sacs during courtship. Males also have elongated pinnae on each side of the neck, which are held erect during courtship display. Females have shorter pinnae. Immatures similar to adults, but more richly colored, especially on throat. Total length, and lengths of wing-chord, pinnae, and tail, greater in males than females, and within each sex tend to be greater in adults than in yearlings.

General Food Types: Diet consists of insects, seeds, leaves, buds, and cultivated grain crops. Juveniles <10 weeks old feed primarily on insects, principally grasshoppers (Orthoptera) and beetles.

Primary Problems: Population declines since 1800s have resulted from conversion, degradation, and fragmentation of habitat through extrinsic factors, including drought, conversion of rangeland to cropland, overgrazing by domestic livestock, chemical control of sand sagebrush and shinnery oak on rangelands, and oil and gas development.

Literature cited.

Habitat:

Inhabits short- to mid-grass prairies interspersed with shinnery oak (Quercus havardii) or sand sagebrush (Artemisia filifolia).

Range:

Extends from western Kansas and southeastern Colorado, south to the northwestern Oklahoma and northern Texas panhandles and eastern New Mexico.

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General Description: Sharp-tailed Grouse have a mottled, light brown appearance. Distinguishing features include a short, pointed tail, white spots on the wings, and dark V-shaped markings on the breast feathers. There are 6 subspecies of sharp-tailed grouse in North America ranging from the Great Lakes states west to Alaska and south to Colorado. Sharp-tailed grouse are most closely related to, but smaller than, the greater and lesser prairie-chicken. Adult sharptails average 42 to 48 cm in length and weigh anywhere from 596 to 1,031 g depending on subspecies, age, sex, and season of the year. Males weigh more than females, and within sexes, adults weigh more than subadults. Unless the males are displaying and exposing their pinkish to violet-colored air sacs, they appear similar in size, shape, and color to females. Birds in hand can be sexed by the presence (females) or absence (males) of traverse barring on the central tail feathers and crown feathers.

General Food Types: In all habitats, sharptails consume a variety of forbs, fruits, seeds, grains, insects, and buds (primarily during winter).

Breeding and Nesting Characteristics: During spring, males gather on traditional breeding areas called leks or dancing grounds where they perform elaborate courtship displays and vocalizations to attract females. Leks are typically located on knolls, benches, or ridge tops that are slightly higher in elevation and support lower growing vegetation than the surrounding terrain. Leks may be used for many years, even decades, and form the hub of all activities associated with breeding. Most females will nest and raise their broods within 2 km of the lek where they were bred. The female constructs a well-concealed, rudimentary nest bowl on the ground that is lined with dried vegetation and body feathers. Females lay an average of 10-12 eggs that are light to dark brown with well-defined reddish-brown spots. The incubation period is about 24 days. Nesting success (% of hens that hatch 1 egg) ranges from 40-70%. Both adult and subadult hens attempt to nest, but adults tend to be more successful than subadults and exhibit a greater tendency to renest if the first nest is destroyed. Sharp-tailed grouse raise one brood per year. The chicks are precocial at hatching, which means they are fully feathered and capable of foraging on their own. They can fly at about 10 days of age and become independent of the brood hen between 10 and 12 weeks of age.

Primary Problems: Because sharptails gather on leks and nest on the ground, they are exceptionally vulnerable to predation. Annual mortality rates frequently exceed 50%. Populations in Canada (except British Columbia), Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Montana are more secure than populations in the Great Lakes and intermountain regions of the United States. The primary threats to sharp-tailed grouse populations include the loss and degradation of habitats due to conversion of native shrub and grasslands to croplands, excessive grazing by livestock, herbicide treatments, fire suppression, invasion of non-native plants, removal of trees and shrubs in riparian areas, invasion of conifers, and urban development.

Habitat:

Preferred habitat varies from mixed grass prairies to sagebrush to post-burn, aspen forest grasslands. Historically, this species was found in shrub-steppe, grassland, and mixed shrub habitats, but more recently populations have adapted to using croplands, Conservation Reserve Program lands, and mine reclamation lands to varying degrees. Habitat requirements are most restricted during winter when the species is dependent on riparian areas, deciduous shrub thickets, and deciduous woodlands. Sharptails use flat to rolling terrain comprised of open shrub-dominated habitats and grasslands for breeding, nesting, and brood-rearing.

Range:

In one of its six subspecific forms, plains, Columbian, prairie, northern, Alaskan, and an undescribed race south of Yellow Knife, this grouse (see attached Map 3 from Johnsguard, 1973) has had the broadest distribution of any grouse species in North America. It is found in the northern U.S. and Canada primarily in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Yukon Territory, AK, MT, WY, ND, SD, NE, MN, WI, and WA with fringes or pockets also in CO, UT, ID, OR, NM, KS, and Quebec. Throughout the area in Alaska, Canada, and the mid-west, Sharp-tailed Grouse remain fairly secure. Like the range of Prairie-Chickens, however, overall the range of Sharp-tailed Grouse has shrunk considerably during the last century. In particular, the western or Columbian subspecies and the eastern or prairie subspecies have suffered severe declines in numbers. The Columbian Sharp-tailed Grouse, was the subject of a 1995 petition to the USFWS by the Biological Diversity Legal Foundation (Boulder, CO) for consideration on the THREATENED and endangered species list.

Links of Interest

USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center

USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center