GROUSE, PARTRIDGES, QUAILS, ETC. 125 



With the Indian as well as the white hunter they are favorite 

 game birds, both because of their large size and the delicate flavor of 

 their meat. Vernon Bailey. 



297a. D. o. fuliginosus Ridgw. Sooty Grouse. 



Adult male. — Similar to Z). obscurus, but darker, sooty blackish with 

 narrower tail band — usually about .00 on middle feathers and not more 

 than .40 on outer pair — and without white on sides of neck. Adult 

 female : similar to female obscurus, but upper parts darker, sometimes 

 washed with dark rusty. Young : darker and more rusty. Length : 15.50- 

 19.00, wing- 7.00-7.50, tail 5.50-7.00. 



Distribution. — Northwest coast mountains, from Alaska south to Cali- 

 fornia and Nevada. 



Nest. — Similar to that of the dusky grouse. Eggs : 8 to 15. 



The sooty grouse, like the wild turkey, is a bird of distinction and 

 peculiar interest wherever found. Climb a mountain ridge toward 

 sunset as the birds are going high to roost, and just before you reach 

 the top, with a cluck and a whirr, down sails a great dark bird with 

 widespread wings and banded tail ; and as you climb on, a banded 

 feather under a low fir bough discloses the hollow where it had 

 been scratching in the soft woods earth. Ride along a trail and as 

 you scan the trees beside you, though your horse hears no sound 

 and detects no motion, your eye ma}' distinguish a statue-like figure 

 close to the tree trunk so like the bark in color that only its form 

 reveals it. Explore a wind-swept granite crag at sunset and in one 

 of its protected wooded niches warm in the evening light a mother 

 grouse, whirrs up into a tree and walks up and down a branch, cran- 

 ing her long neck with its small pointed head, clucking anxiously 

 as she goes, and at the turns bobbing her tail and wobbling hard to 

 keep her balance. As she calls, one after another her invisible 

 young burst from the brushy thicket at your feet and on stiff convex 

 wing whirl away over the rocks out of sight. Go to a canyon 

 where the male is hooting and nearly a mile away you will hear his 

 loud ventrilociuial /rjioo, wJioo, whoo. Followed up, he proves to be 

 near the top of a tall pine fifty to seventy-five feet above your head, 

 sitting close to the trunk, concealed by the branches. Through the 

 glass he is seen to sit with spread tail and hanging wings, filling his 

 yellow pouches till his neck looks almost as big as his body, when 

 with a pumping motion of the head he gives his hollow muffled 

 hoot. If you stay to listen you may hear the booming at short 

 intervals for hours. 



In winter, ^lajor Bendire says, the groust» spend most of their 

 time in the tops of tall firs and pines, coming down only in the 

 middle of the day to get water from a mountain spring, for the 

 treetops supply buds and needles for their food. 



