. [Articles about birds from National geographic magazine]. Birds. HUNTING WITH A MICROPHONE 711. For five days the members of the expedition made continuous observations, through a pair of powerful binoculars (pages 712 and 713). The camp at the base of this large oak was surrounded by water, and palmetto fans kept the blankets out of the mud (page 706). laid the dust, but filled every depression in the ground with water, including those trodden by the cattle themselves around the drinking vats that were normally kept filled by windmills. Never before had they seen standing water except in th
. [Articles about birds from National geographic magazine]. Birds. HUNTING WITH A MICROPHONE 711. For five days the members of the expedition made continuous observations, through a pair of powerful binoculars (pages 712 and 713). The camp at the base of this large oak was surrounded by water, and palmetto fans kept the blankets out of the mud (page 706). laid the dust, but filled every depression in the ground with water, including those trodden by the cattle themselves around the drinking vats that were normally kept filled by windmills. Never before had they seen standing water except in these vats and never had they drunk out of anything else. So now, with the vats in the center of large ponds, they could be seen wading out to them to get a drink. Each morning and again at evening dur- ing the spring on the Davison Ranch, the lesser prairie chicken cocks assemble in groups of from four to forty on certain flat- topped knolls in the shinnery to compete with one another in a show of prowess, both of voice and of bodily vigor (page 701). For six weeks the males engage in these matches before the females intentionally visit their gobbling grounds. Each male comes back to exactly the same spot each morning and gradually forces upon his neighbors a respect for his territory, some 25 or 30 feet square. Many of the combats are mere gestures or feints of anger, but others are sufficiently severe to scatter feathers over the shinnery. Sometimes when the males jump at one an- other and strike with their wings, a hap- less bird is flipped clear over onto his back by a stronger rival. Each morning from April 25 to ]\Iay 2 found us at the gobbling grounds of a group of 26 males with the microphone staked out in the territory of some aggressive cock. Seven of the eight mornings the wind howled in the microphone and the dust blew, but at last it was quiet and we se- cured a nearly perfect recording of the birds' sounds, from the pattering of their feet and the silken twitching
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