This is for a national magazine for their front-of-book travel/science section. Sorry for the quick turnaround but I need to turn this in tomorrow evening. It's short at least! It's very slightly over word count, should be 250. I want to know if there's anything unclear, or that you think I really should explain/ie you have questions about? I can cut in some places to answer questions so just let me know what you think :) Thanks! PS Do you get a decent image of what these things look like? There will be a photo though...
HOUSTON - In the first rays of morning light, a male Attwater's prairie chicken erects his tail and neck feathers, inflates his orange neck sacs and emits a low boom, not unlike the sound of blowing into a Coke bottle. Then the dance begins. He stamps wildly, making a rapid 180-degree turn. In the distance, another male starts. Before long, females wander over. "They are very nonchalant, appearing to pay no mind, just kinda teasing them," says Terry Rossignol, Manager of the Attwater's Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge, 40 miles west of Houston, and one of North America's last patches of coastal tallgrass prairie. "The males, on the other hand, will explode into a dancing frenzy when any females show up." The Refuge hosts the free Attwater's Prairie Chicken Festival the second weekend in April. They set up viewing scopes within 100 yards of booming, stamping, dancing chickens. Booming season starts in early February and runs through April and chances are above average to see a prairie chicken this year; although they have 10,528 acres to roam, a few have hunkered down near the self-guided auto loop. Forty miles south of Houston, the Nature Conservancy's 2,300-acre Texas City Prairie Preserve on Galveston Bay has the only other wild population, and offer free tours twice weekly. "Currently, the birds are in dire straits," says Rossignol. Both locations release captive-bred birds each year, but hawks and owls kill up to half the population each year, not to mention imported fire ants devouring newly hatched chicks. "With less than 50 birds in the wild at two locations, anything could wipe them out in the blink of an eye. Hurricanes Rita and Katrina in 2005 really put this int! o perspective." {BY WENDEE HOLTCAMP} Wendee Holtcamp, M.S. Wildlife Ecology * http://www.wendeeholtcamp.com * 6-wk Online Writing Course Starts Nov 24! *