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Transcript

A sneak peek at The Best Known Grouse

The anatomy of a 47-second teaser video.

The Best Known Grouse of the Western States is a short documentary I’m working on to accompany my upcoming exhibition, Winging It: A Brief History of Humanity’s Relationship with Birds, which opens on June 19 at Chicago’s Newberry Library. It tells the story of the Pinnated Grouse, now known as the Greater Prairie Chicken, during the 19th century in Illinois. It was author and sportsman Charles Hallock who once stated that the Pinnated Grouse was the best known grouse species in the West, which then meant most anywhere west of the Allegheny Mountains.

Here’s a little bit of detail about the above clip and how it came together, with time stamps so you can follow along.

:00

The clip opens with a look at a male Prairie Chicken on the lekking grounds and the sounds of its eerie vocalizations known as booming.

:09

This is a photo postcard of Prairie Chickens in Minnesota. It shows what looks to be a child hunting with a rifle and a dog. A handwritten note on the back (not pictured) says it’s from Sibley County in 1889.

:17

The Newberry has the archives of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, including images of daily life in the Midwest. This one shows a combine in a wheat field, harvesting the wheat. The operator sits under an umbrella. The goal here for me was to show how agricultural expansion was impacting the environment.

:25

This 19th-century broadside from the Illinois Central Railroad shows how the Western frontier was then being marketed. Land speculators were selling property including two years of credit at 2 percent interest. No money down!

:31

Here we have a Prairie Chicken in flight. It’s easy to forget that these birds don’t live entirely on the ground and can be found perching in low trees and shrubs. In fact, a percentage of the species’ population did migrate at one time.

:37

This 1835 map shows Missouri and Illinois together and pans across some Illinois counties where Prairie Chickens once thrived. At first, the mosaic of farmland was beneficial to the birds, but that changed quickly.

:42

A word about the music. Old Town School of Folk Music granted me permission to use some of their iconic songs for the film. This one is “El-A-Noy,” by the great Win Stracke [strock-EE], who founded the Old Town School. I didn’t know this until a few days ago, but Stracke was blacklisted during the 1950s and his national children’s music show was cancelled from NBC. It’s been reported that Stracke wasn’t a member of the communist party, however.

The full Grouse video will include historic footage paired with voiceovers from some familiar birders portraying figures like Hallock and Robert Ridgway. Looking forward to sharing the finished product in June.

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