The Male Sage Grouse’s Elaborate Mating Ritual

The male greater sage grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) is the largest grouse species in North America and puts on one of the most spectacular mating rituals. Their range spans the Sagebrush Sea (an area of sagebrush grasslands) that runs across 11 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. In this Instagram post, we get a close-up view of their behavior during the mating season. Let’s discover how and why they behave in this way.

Sage Grouse Reproduction

The greater sage grouse belongs to the Phasianidae family of birds. Greater sage grouse are large, chubby birds with small heads. Males can grow to around 29 inches high and weigh up to around 102 ounces. For most of the year, they browse quietly on sagebrush and other ground plants. Between March and May, both females and males gather for the mating season. Once mating is over, the females create shallow nests where they lay six or seven eggs and incubate them for between 25 and 29 days.

Spectacular Mating Ritual

As you can see in the Instagram post, the greater sage grouse mating ritual is an impressive sight. Males gather on patches of bare ground called leks, which is why their mating rituals are known as ‘lekking’. They travel back to the same lekking site every year, and these sites are chosen because they offer maximum visibility with minimum risk from predators.

Here, the males put on their show and the females stay close by, checking them out and selecting which one they will mate with. The stakes are high because dominant males get to mate with up to 80 percent of the females! Scientists have recorded a single successful male mating 37 times with 37 different females in just 37 minutes. An impressive mating display indicates that the male is strong and healthy – these are the traits that she is looking for in her offspring.

Catching the Female’s Attention

To impress the ladies, the males start by puffing out their feathers. In the clip, you can also see him inflating yellow air sacs in the front of his throat. These are balloon-like structures called cervical apteria. He prepares for this by gulping and holding about a gallon of air in a pouch in his esophagus. Then, he squeezes it out with force, inflating the air sacs briefly to around 50 times their deflated size. The sacs deflate rapidly, making a rapid-fire popping or snapping sound that can be heard miles away. The sound is also louder to the side, which explains why you often see males standing beside the females rather than directly in front of them. To add to the impact, he also takes a couple of steps forward, holds his tail feathers fanned in an upright position, and flares his yellow eye-comb feathers.