Swan Valley naturalist program offers chance to learn from the landscape

There are lots of things in nature that are easier to hear than to see. The cricket in the bush, the frog on the pond, the little songbird way up at the top of the tree – the songs are beautiful, but it’s nearly impossible to watch the performance. For me, the ultimate example of this is the drumming display of the ruffed grouse. 

If you’re not familiar with the sound of this display, it is truly impressive. A series of pulses so deep and so loud that they’re felt with the body as much as heard with the ears. The pulses come slow at first, but quickly accelerate to an impossible speed before stopping abruptly. If you haven’t heard it, imagine a subwoofer having heart palpitations.  

Perhaps even more impressive than the sound itself is how they make it. It’s not something they can do with their voice – they do it by flapping. They actually use their wings to create a series of sonic booms. Yes, really. They flap their wings so forcefully, that the feathers move faster than the speed of sound.  

Why would a bird need to do such a thing? How could this ridiculous behavior have evolved? As with many of the most extraordinary things birds do, it really comes down to males showing off. To females, he’s showing off how awesome he is at performing this extremely challenging behavior, and wouldn’t all the grouse hens like his genes in their eggs? To other males, he’s showing off how fit he is, letting the neighbors know he’s ready to kick some ass if need be. For the same reasons many birds sing, grouse drum.  

So, every spring, I’d try to sneak up and watch one of these wood chickens break Mach 1, but I apparently spooked them every time. The drumming would stop, and the grouse would be gone. I’d just about given up, when one Memorial Day I had an opportunity too good to pass up. I was sitting by a little creek at dusk when I spotted a grouse up in a young aspen, gobbling down new spring leaves. I watched him defoliate a few branches, then flutter down into the brush along the stream. A few minutes later, I heard him drum. I followed the sound, and soon found myself squeezing between branches and through juniper bushes, moving as silently as I possibly could.

After contorting myself through bushes all along the bank, I reached a culvert – I might have passed by him already. So I sat, looking vaguely at a downed log, and waited for him to drum again so I’d know where he was. Then, with the next explosive stream of wingbeats, I saw him. Right there on the log I was watching. A fluttering shadow under a canopy of conifer branches, lit only by a clear half-moon and the afterglow of the sunset. I slowly raised my binoculars, and there was my bird, his neck feathers extended like a Victorian collar (the eponymous “ruff”), his head crest raised like a crown. I watched and waited for minutes, as silent and still as I could be, while my heartbeat mimicked his drum. He stood there on his log, attentive and alert, listening for his neighbor’s response. 

Eventually, the agonizing wait paid off. He reared back, raising himself upright like a penguin. He puffed his chest so far forward that the feathers grew thin over his skin. Then, he began to beat his wings against his chest with powerful strokes, slowly at first and then building to that breakneck roll, his wings beating faster than a hummingbird’s. And each beat was so incredibly powerful – even at top speed, the strength of each stroke was unwavering. The overall performance was just so utterly intense, the sound was almost unremarkable by comparison. 

Eventually I climbed out of the streambank, listening to his drumming as I walked back, listening as he waited, and as the neighboring grouse responded in kind. They drummed back and forth until long after the sunlight was gone, until the moon and stars filled the sky. I laid down in my bed, not far from the creek, still listening to their competition in sound, their conversation of endurance, speed and skill. 

Cedar’s experience highlights a key element of Swan Valley Connections’ Master Naturalist Program — the value of careful observation and learning directly from the landscape around us. In this course, participants will spend four weekends in the lower Swan River Watershed, engaging in field-based education. Led by Cedar and SVC instructors, you'll learn to identify species, interpret behaviors, and understand ecological relationships. 

Topics include botany, birds, forest ecology, wildlife tracks and more. The course will meet on May 3-4 July 19-20 and October 11-12, 2025, as well as Jan. 17-18, 2026. 

For more information on how to register, visit swanvalleyconnections.org/montana-master-naturalist or reach out to Taylor Tewksbury at taylor@svconnections.org. 

Cedar Mathers-Winn is a naturalist, biologist and educator based in Bozeman. He earned his Master’s degree studying animal communication in southwestern Montana, and has studied ecology and animal behavior in mountain, tropic, and desert ecosystems. As an educator, Cedar emphasizes the everyday subtleties of nature, revealing worlds of wildness hidden in plain sight.