SPRING IN WESTERN OREGON. 191 



manners or morals on that soft-spoken reprobate. The pygmy 

 nuthatch runs up and down the tree trunks, the Audubon's 

 and the hermit warblers sport in the branches on the edge of 

 the woods, and to a lone tree in a clearing a Lewis's woodpecker 

 flaps her heavy flight, betraying the secret of her nest to all 

 observers. These are the familiar sights near the borders 

 of an Oregon forest. 



Sometimes in following up one of the clear mountain streams 

 of Oregon, cold, green, and sparkling, that sweep down through 

 the deep, narrow canons from their sources among the moun- 

 tain snows, one may hear among the scattered firs or pines 

 above the undergrowth, the love-call of the sooty grouse. It is 

 a sound equally hard to locate and to describe. The residents 

 sometimes call it "hooting" and sometimes " booming." You 

 may look high for it, you may look low for it, but you will not 

 be able to tell wiiether it is near at hand or far away. The 

 best way, perhaps, is not to seek the voice but to look out 

 from some convenient resting-place halfway up the canon 

 side, where you are on a level with the branches of the trees 

 below you. From such an outlook you may sometimes see the 

 male grouse in the very act of booming. 



He is a bird as large as a hen, dull-colored and unin- 

 teresting in appearance, a mingled black and slatey black, 

 with a few whitish markings that only help to blend 

 his color with the dark shadows of the Oregon forest. 

 Above each eye is a featherless tract, and on the neck 

 of the male are two pouches of bare skin, which ordinarily 

 are hidden from view by the feathers. In the spring, 

 however, when the male bird booms, these pouches undergo 

 a change and become a pinkish orange. During the act of 

 booming they stand out like small oranges on each side of the 

 bird's head. Whether the noise is caused in taking the air 



