greater prairie chicken, pinnated grouse, boomer (Tympanuchus cupido) Tetrao cupido drawn by T. W. Wood for second edition of Darwin's The Descent of Man, 1874
Description
Scan of Figure 39, from Darwin's Descent of Man, second edition. Shows Greater Prairie Chicken Tympanuchus cupido (labelled Tetrao cupido in image) male displaying to females with inflated vocal sacs, raised crest and tail, and spread wings.
Date 1874
Source The Descent of Man, And Selection in Relation to Sex, by Charles Darwin. Reprinted from the Second English Edition, Revised and Augmented, A. L. Burt Company, New York. 1874. Page 422. Image scanned by User:Davepape
Author T. W. Wood
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Descent_of_Man_-_Burt_1874_-_Fig_39.png
The greater prairie chicken or pinnated grouse (Tympanuchus cupido), sometimes called a boomer, is a large bird in the grouse family. One of the most famous aspects of these creatures is the mating ritual called booming. There are three subspecies;
- The heath hen, Tympanuchus cupido cupido, which was historically found along the Atlantic coast, is extinct. It was possibly a distinct species; in this case the two other forms would be T. pinnatus pinnatus and T. p. attwateri.
- Attwater's prairie chicken, Tympanuchus cupido attwateri is endangered and restricted to coastal Texas.
- The greater prairie chicken, Tympanuchus cupido pinnatus, is now restricted to a small section of its former range.
Order: Galliformes
Family: Phasianidae
Genus: Tympanuchus
Species: Tympanuchus cupido (Linnaeus, 1758)
Synonyms: Tetrao cupido.
