MOUNT PINOS GROUSE 117 



Young. — Mrs. Wheelock (1904) says that as soon as the young are 

 out of the shell and dry, away goes the mother, 



proud as a peacock, with them at her heels. And now the father is intro- 

 duced to family cares, and he scratches for bugs, calling the young with impera- 

 tive little chucks to come. He is the drill-master of the little flock, teaching 

 them with infinite patience all that they need to know of wood lore. He stands 

 on guard at every suspicious noise, and whistles his warning when danger 

 threatens. When their wing-feathers have developed and they can flutter up 

 to a low branch in the bush, they roost there instead of cuddling under the 

 mother's broad wings at night. But they remain with the parents and evi- 

 dently uniler discipline throughout the first six or eight months of their exist- 

 ence. In the wintry weather, when their mountain homes are covered deep 

 with snow, they often sleep huddled together deep in a drift, waking to feed 

 upon the buds of the coniferous trees, but seldom seeking a lower level. They 

 are the hardy mountaineers, the children of the forest ranges. 



Grinnell and Storer (1921) write: 



By early July the new broods of grouse are to be looked for in the brush- 

 bordered glades of the forests. When the chicks have been partly reared the 

 males desert their mates, and, forming in flocks of 6 or 8, work higher in 

 the mountains. The females remain with, and continue to care for, their off- 

 spring, these family units remaining separate for the time being. Finally, as 

 the summer wanes, they, too, work up into the Hudsonian Zone. Thus, while 

 the Mountain Quail go down-hill in the fall, the grouse go up-hill. 



Food. — The same observers say on this subject : 



One of the above-mentioned male birds was shot, and its crop was found to 

 contain 1,520 needle tips of the lodgepole pine. The bitten-off ends of needles 

 varied from one-fourth to one inch in length. The crop also contained a few 

 fragments of very young pistillate cones. The bill of this bird was smeared 

 with pitch. The crop of an adult female grouse obtained at Walker Lake held 

 eleven ripe rose hips, and the gizzard was filled with the hard seeds of the rose, 

 together with grains of quartz which of course had served to grind the 

 resistant portions of the bird's food. 



Grinnell, Dixon, and Linsdale (1930), in their report on the 

 Lassen Peak region, say: 



The crop of a female trapped on July 6, 1924, in a rolled-oat baited steel 

 trap contained a quantity of unripe manzanita berries. On September 16, 1923, 

 at 8,200 feet on Warner Creek, a bird was discovered as it was eating manzanita 

 berries. At the same station a grouse was watched as it stalked grasshoppers. 

 The bird would stretch out its neck and slowly approach the insect until within 

 one-half meter when it would make a quick rush forward and capture the 

 hopper in its bill. 



DENDRAGAPUS FULIGINOSUS HOWARDI Dickey and van Rossem 



MOUNT PINOS GROUSE 

 HABITS 



The southernmost race of the fuliginosus group of " blue grouse " 

 has been recently discovered on Mount Pinos in Kern County, Calif. 

 74564—32 9 



