Grasslands National Park and a long awaited sharp-tailed grouse lek

Grasslands National Park is most definitely one of my favourite parks in Canada. It’s the only park that protects mixed-grass prairie, Canada’s most endangered ecosystem. Only ~19% of our country’s native prairie remains; most of it has been converted to cropland or tame pasture. Native prairie supports a very high biodiversity, including many species that are not found anywhere else in Canada. Grasslands National Park is home to several species at risk including the black-footed ferret, plains bison, sage grouse and burrowing owl. It’s also a very undeveloped park, with only a few gravel roads, one corralled campsite and virtually no buildings on site. This makes it a great spot for wildlife and hiking, and of course an incredibly important ecosystem.

My first trip to GNP was during the summer of 2013, camping with a couple of friends over a long weekend. Due to some slightly inaccurate time estimates, we didn’t arrive at the park until about 11:30pm and of course couldn’t find the campground in the dark (no lights at GNP! On the figuratively-speaking-bright side, this also makes it North America’s darkest dark sky preserve, phenomenal for star gazing) so we ended up sleeping in the truck bed at a turn-off from the main road. As soon as sunrise hit, I woke up to my camping buddy shaking me awake, excitedly whispering “Elaine Elaine! There’s a lek outside!!” And wouldn’t you know it, we unknowingly slept in the middle of a sharp-tailed grouse lek site! There were ten or twelve males dancing right outside the truck, all doing their best to impress one very picky female. We watched them for a good hour or two before falling back asleep, but it was definitely the best 5am surprise I’ve ever woken up to. The ultimate downside though: my camping buddy and I were both enthusiastic amateur photographers, but since we’d slept in the truck bed, we’d moved all out gear into the cab… Needless to say both of us were very frustrated at the missed photo op, but still crazy excited about waking up to a lek outside the truck.

Sleepy plains bison from my first visit to GNP

 On to more current events! Ever since that first lek, I’d been dying to find another one and try to catch some good shots of the birds dancing. This led me to my fourth trip to GNP! The second trip was later in 2013 for black-footed ferret monitoring (run around prairie dog colonies all night with a giant spotlight looking for ferret eyeshine) and third in spring of 2014 doing sage grouse surveys (run around historic lek sites just before sunrise with super-powerful microphones listening for sage grouse). But the fourth time was just for fun J Hiking, camping, and photography. The first night we spent in East block badlands hiking around, which was a great time, and then the second night we camped out at the lek from my first GNP trip. It’s a super popular site; the birds were even there in the evening beforehand – not dancing, just hanging out. After carefully positioning the car for best viewing, we bunkered down… and woke up to the sweet sweet sound of sharpies lekking! Music to my little ears and candy for my little camera. There were about nine males and one female this time. Most of the morning was overcast so the lighting was pretty dark for a while, but the sun really came out and created perfect  backlighting for a solid 15 minutes of photography gold! I snapped a bunch of shots as quick as I could (a car was also coming down the road so I knew my birds would all flush soon). Watching sharp-tailed grouse lek is definitely better than television; I watched them for three hours before going back to sleep. After a whole year of waiting, I got my sharpie photoshoot :D

The fight begins! 

I really like this shot, there's just something about the angle and symmetry :)

This proud grouse is looking for his next competitor.

I love the way that the dust around his feet is lit up by the sun.

Other highlights of the GNP trip were the first prairie crocuses, a couple long-billed curlews, a few pronghorn, a chestnut-collared longspur, a couple of owls (not sure of the ID, either GHOW or SEOW), several ring-necked pheasants, and getting chased by a herd of bison. Okay that last one was a bit of an exaggeration, but they just popped up running up over a hill towards us from about 400m away and they cover ground pretty darn fast so it was a bit scary. But all’s well that ends well J

Like these photos? Want to see more? Visit my photography website at www.elainekennedyphotography.com!