20 GROUSE AND WILD TUEKEYS OF UNITED STATES. 



15 to 20, but, according to the people of that section, the prairie hens 

 gather in flocks of hundreds in the late fall. At this season they are 

 destructive to unthreshed wheat and oats, tearing off the surface of 

 the stacks. In winter they visit cattle pens and corrals in search of 

 food. During severe winters they are sometimes so numerous that 

 they become a nuisance. Some idea may be had of their abundance 

 during winter from the information secured by Oberholser that one 

 man shipped 20,000 of them from this section in a single season. 



THE SHARP-TAILED GROUSE. 



{Pedioscetes phasianeUus.)^ 



The sharp-tailed grouse is about the same size and has the general 

 appearance of the prairie hen. Its range is wide, extending from 

 Lake Michigan to northeastern California, and from northeastern 

 Xew Mexico to Alaska. In the northern part of the Mississippi 

 Valley its range overlaps that of the prairie hen, and mixed flocks are 

 sometimes seen, but the ' spike tail ' is seldom found in such large num- 

 bers as that species. It shows also much less adaptability to changed 

 conditions and disappears more rapidly after the subjection of its 

 range to agriculture. In regard to its curious courtship, Professor 

 Macoun writes of the Columbian sharp-tailed grouse : ^ 



The males collect in large nuiubers on some hill about the end of April or 

 beginning of May to have their annual dance, which they keep up for a month or 

 six weeks. It is almost impossible to drive them away from one of their hills 

 when they are dancing. One day about the middle of May. I shot into a dancing 

 party, killing two. and wounding another, which flew a short distance. I went 

 to get it, and before I got back to pick up the dead birds, the others were back 

 dancing around them. 



About a dozen eggs generally make a clutch, and but one brood is 

 reared in a season. The eggs vary from buff to olive-brown and are 

 usuall}^ lightly spotted with brown. 



From two to three months after hatching, the young are full grown 

 and afford quite as good if not better sport than the prairie hen. 

 They lie well to the dog and usually rise with a noisy, clucking cry ; 

 after a short distance the flight changes to an alternation of rapid 

 vibrations of the wings and gliding or sailing on stiffly outspread 

 pinions. The flesh o^ the young, like that of young prairie hens, is 



a The sharp-tailed grouse varies in different parts of its range, and has been 

 divided into two geographic forms in addition to the typical bird. These are the 

 Columbian sharp-tailed grouse {Pedicccetcs ijha.siuiieUiis co?(/«/&/a»MS), occupying 

 the western part of the bird's range in the United States, and the prairie sharp- 

 tailed grouse (Pedioccetes j)haslaiieUus campcstris) which covers the plains east 

 of the Rocky Mountains. 



6 Cat. Can. Birds, pt. 1, p. 212, 1900. 



