290 BULLETIN 162, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Young. — Major Bendire (1892) writes: 



The young are active, handsome little creatures, and able to use their legs at 

 once on leaving the shell. They are at first fed mostly on insects, young grass- 

 hoppers and crickets forming the principal portion of their bill of fare. The 

 former are always abundant and easily obtained; later, when the young are 

 able to fly, the mother leads them to the creek bottoms, where they find an 

 abundance of berries and browse. They are especially fond of the seeds of the 

 wild sunflower, which grows very abundantly in some places, and when these are 

 ripe, many of these birds can be found in the vicinity where these plants grow. 



Coues (1874) says: 



The young, as usual among gallinaceous birds, run about almost as soon as 

 they are hatched ; and it is interesting to witness the watchful solicitude with 

 which they are cherished by the parent when she first leads them from the nest 

 in quest of food, glancing in every direction, in her intense anxiety, lest harm 

 befall them. She clucks matronly to bring them to brood under her wings or 

 to call them together to scramble for a choice morsel of food she has found. 

 Should danger threaten, a different note alarms them ; they scatter in every 

 direction, running, like little mice, through the grass till each finds a hiding 

 place; meanwhile, she exposes herself to attract attention, till, satisfied of the 

 safety of the brood, she whirrs away and awaits the time when she may reas- 

 semble her family. In the region where I observed the birds in June and July, 

 they almost invariably betook themselves to the dense, resistant underbrush, 

 which extends for some distance outward from the wooded streams, seeking 

 safety in this all but impenetrable cover, where it was nearly impossible to 

 catch the young ones, or even to see them, until they began to top the bushes 

 in their early short flights. The wing and tail-feathers sprout in a few days 

 and are quite well grown before feathers appear among the down of the body. 

 The first coveys seen able to rise on wing were noticed early in July ; but by 

 the middle of this month most of them fly smartly for short distances, being 

 about as large as Quails. Others, however, may be observed through August, 

 little, if any, larger than this, showing a wide range of time of hatching, though 

 scarcely warranting the inference of two broods in a season. 



Behavior. — The habits of this grouse are essentially the same as 

 those of the prairie sharp-tailed grouse, but Bendire (1892) observes : 



The habits of the Columbian Sharp-tailed Grouse vary very materially 

 in different portions of the country where I have met with them. At Fort 

 Klamath, Oregon, where they are rather rare, I have found them inhabiting 

 decidedly marshy and swampy country, and keeping close to, if not in the edges 

 of, the pine timber throughout the year. At Fort Custer, Montana, this Grouse, 

 during the winter, was much more arboreal than terrestrial in its habits, moving 

 around on the limbs of the large cottonwood trees as unconcernedly as on the 

 ground ; spending in this way almost all their time, except when feeding. At 

 Harney, Oregon, and Lapwai, Idaho, they might be frequently seen in small trees 

 and bushes which grow along the creeks, but scarcely ever in large trees, of 

 which there was an abundance. Here, they uttered very few notes at any time, 

 while at Fort Custer I have frequently heard them cackling in the tall cotton 

 woods which grew along the Big Horn River bottom, before I had approached 

 within several hundred yards of them, evidently giving notice to other birds in 

 the vicinity of my coming. This fine game bird is decreasing very rapidly 

 throughout its range. It does not seem to prosper in the vicinity of man, and 



