Usually, we start at about four o'clock in the morning.
After the cover of darkness, wildlife biologist Nancy Crystal drives north from her home base
in Spooner to the Nama Kagan Barren's wildlife area.
We want to be on site at least 45 minutes before sunlight this morning.
Oh my gosh, it was barely in time.
Barely a heartbeat before the landscape begins a wild awakening.
Long before she sees them in the moonlight, she can hear subtle tremors on the prairie.
It's a beautiful day.
Sharped out grouse are pretty rare species in Wisconsin.
Nancy bears witness to an ancient rhythm as old as the natural world.
It's an intricate courtship dance from one of our state's most unique birds.
All the guys pipe each other up and we start dancing around and puffing out their nice
purple sack.
They put their pointy white tail up in the air and then they stick out their nice orange
eyebrow.
And their goal is to do the best dance.
I love the dance, so to have a bird that really has some good steps and can bring some
liveliness to the grounds, I think that that is pretty cool.
The male grouse are the only dancers and they work the prairie floor to attract females.
The females seem to act like, ah, no big deal.
I'm not even looking at you on it.
Of course they're watching and they're paying attention.
The champions of the grassland hold their dancing duel in a prairie location called
a lek.
The arts had 22 males on it and 60 males that came this morning, but of all those males
you just get one lucky guy and that one lucky guy is the only one that is going to be sharing
its genes out in the world.
Each spring in the pre-dawn chill, Nancy and her team do a survey of sharp-tailed grouse.
The reason we do it is to really keep track of what we have for a population of what is
really a rare species.
She counts the birds and looks for expansion of traditional mating grounds.
So the sharp-tailed grouse I think are really cool.
The females come and visit, they fly up into the trees, they run along the edge, so it's
really tough to be counting the females.
For more than 26 years, Nancy has brought her passion for wildlife to the Department
of Natural Resources, her job to manage this ecosystem, ensuring all native species can
thrive and survive in this sanctuary.
I come to work and I know that I have habitat that needs to be maintained and I have species
that need to be managed.
So for me a great day is when I'm able to go out and see the benefits of all the work
that we do to manage the property and have it for the public to come and view the sharp
tails.
That is a really good day.
Nancy's workplace is a wildlife area filled with the desolate beauty that you will not
find anywhere else on the planet.
It is true that this is the only place in the world that you can go and find pine oak
barrens in these Northwest sands.
It also is a globally rare habitat type and it's got such a diversity of grasses and
flowers and shrubs.
Nancy has a deep connection to this untamed wilderness and the creatures that inhabit
it.
Never have seen a show like this when I first moved.
They might be thinking about leaving.
Pretty cool aren't they?
Get satisfaction out of my job.
When I go home to my family I can go home happy but I had a good day and just feel as
though I'm making a difference even if it's a small little thing like that just makes
me feel good all the time.
Reclaiming this unusual landscape is a job both rich in research and rewards and that
is Nancy's core motivation.
When they're dancing and everything they end up just kind of losing feathers here and
there and then we can use that for genetics.
If you're going to do something in life every day you should be something that's fun and
enjoyable.
It's a cool looking one.
Those kinds of things are pretty great.