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Watching prairie chickens

The annual prairie chicken mating dance, called booming, will continue through April around Kansas. Here are some places you can go to watch.

• Dexter: The leks, or dancing grounds, are open for viewing each Friday and Saturday. Overnight accommodations are available -- bunkhouse rooms with shower/bath facilities or bed and breakfast rooms with private bath. Prices include transportation to the lek and a country breakfast afterward.

Bed and breakfast rooms, $65; dorm rooms, $30; drive in (morning only) $20; children under 12, free.

For more information: Call 620-876-5700 or e-mail mbmassey@sktc.net for reservations, information, and directions.

• Near Barton and Stafford counties: Make anappointment by calling Cris Collier, executive director of the Great Bend Convention and Visitors Bureau, 620-792-2750. Cost varies.

• Elkhart: The U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service offers two blinds for lesser prairie chickens in the Cimarron National Grassland on a first-come, first-served basis. The blinds are free and open to the public.

Self-tour booklets can be obtained through the grassland's Web site or local office in Elkhart, 242 E. Highway 56. For more information, call 620-697-4621

or go to www.fs.fed.us/r2/psicc/cim/

• Wakefield: Annual Kansas Birding Festival, April 25-27, at the upper end of Milford Lake in north-central Kansas. The festival offers guided prairie chicken viewing. Registration for the three-day event is $100, not including lodging.

For more information, call Chuck Otte at 785-238-4161 or 785-238-8800.

• Near Manhattan: Konza Prairie offers greater prairie chicken viewing by reservation. The Konza Prairie Biological Station and the Konza Environmental Education Program offers guided tours from an observation blind daily, four weeks each spring. The observation blind can seat six to seven people; smaller groups are asked to share the blind with others. Through ports in the blind, visitors come within 10 to 50 feet of booming birds. Cost is $15 per person.

For more information, call 785-587-0381 or e-mail keepkonza@ksu.edu.