Lesser prairie-chicken

The lesser prairie chicken is a bird in the grouse tribe of the family Phasianidae, first described by ornithologist Robert Ridgway in 1873. It is a medium to large bird, 38 to 41 centimeters in length and weighing 630 to 810 grams, with striped white and brown plumage similar to its larger relative the greater prairie chicken but noticeably smaller and paler; males have distinctive yellow comb like feathers above the eyes and long head feathers, and display pinkish red gular sacs during courtship. Roughly half the population inhabits western Kansas, with the rest distributed across the sandhills and prairies of Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle, eastern New Mexico and southeastern Colorado, favoring habitat containing sand sagebrush, shinnery oak and regional grasses and shrubs. The IUCN lists the species as Vulnerable, with the population having declined roughly 97 percent since 1800 and its habitat reduced by about 85 percent, driven by drought, oil contamination, the spread of woody plants and conversion of land to agriculture.