DUSKY GROUSE 93 



with suitable gestures, similar to but more tender and graceful than those of 

 our domestic hen. She stood within 6 or 7 feet of me pleading her cause and 

 easily won it. In her beautiful summer dress of brown, handsomely plumed 

 as she was, she looked very interesting. 



In a single instance only, with a brood about ten days old, have I noted the 

 presence of both parents. Perched upon a fallen tree the male seemed to be on 

 the lookout, while the female and young were feeding close by. This seeming 

 indifference of the male while the brood is very young, allowing his mate to 

 protect them, if he really is always near at hand, looks very strange, and yet 

 it may be the care, since he is generally with the covey when the young are well 

 grown. Directly the young are able to travel, the hen Grouse leads them to 

 some desirable opening, skirting the timber or gulch, where bearberries, wild 

 raspberries, gooseberries, and currants, as well as grasshoppers, worms, and 

 grubs are abundant, managing them just as the domestic hen does her brood. 

 The young grow rapidly, and when about two weeks old can do a little with 

 their wings ; then, instead of hiding on the ground, they flush and endeavor to 

 conceal themselves in the standing timber. Until almost fully grown they are 

 very foolish ; flushed, they will tree at once, in the silly belief that they are out 

 of danger, and will quietly suffer themselves to be pelted with clubs and stones 

 till they are struck down one after another. With a shotgun, of course the 

 whole covey is bagged without much trouble, and as they are, in my opinion, 

 the most delicious of all Grouse for the table, they are gathered up unsparingly. 



Plumages. — The sequence of molts and plumages is the same as in 

 the sooty grouse, of which I have found more material for study. 

 The racial characters are apparent in immature birds. Kichardson's 

 grouse has been known to hybridize with the Columbian sharp -tailed 

 grouse (Allan Brooks, 1907). 



Food. — Mrs. Bailey (1928) summarizes the food of the dusky 

 grouse very well, as follows : 



In 45 crops and stomachs examined, the food consists of 6.73 per cent animal 

 matter — 5.73 per cent grasshoppers, and the rest beetles, ants, and caterpillars — 

 and 93.27 per cent vegetable matter — seeds, fruits, and leaves, coniferous foliage 

 amounting to 54.02 per cent, fruits 20.09 per cent, including manzanita berries, 

 mountain ash, service-berry, currant, gooseberry, etc. One cock shot at 11,600 

 feet on Pecos Baldy in a strawberry patch had both crop and gizzard filled 

 mainly with strawberries. The crop of another shot between 8,000 and 9,000 

 feet contained 27 strawberries, 28 bear-berries, 12 Canadian buffalo-berries, 

 flowers of Indian paint brush and milk vetch, leaves of vetch and buffalo-berry, 

 and a few ants and caterpillars, while its gizzard was filled with seeds of bear- 

 berry, Canadian buffalo-berry, and strawberry, a few green leaves, and a number 

 of ants, beetles, and other insects. Grasshoppers, the green leaves of blue-berry 

 and vetch, salal, and other berry seeds, needles of Douglas spruce and fir, 

 together with gravel and hard quartz grinding stones were among the items 

 that the field examination of other specimens revealed. The quartz grinding 

 stones were found in gizzards apparently filled with hard coniferous needles. 

 These needles seem to be the regular winter food as under a winter roosting 

 tree on Pecos Baldy the winter dung was composed entirely of spruce needles. 

 (Three birds taken in September near Golden, Colorado, had their " crops 

 crammed with the berries of kinnikinick.") 



