PRAIRIE SHARP-TAILED GPvOUSE 291 



as the country is becoming more and more settled, it recedes before civilization. 

 As it is not a particularly shy bird, it falls an easy victim to the gunner. 



PEDIOECETES PHASIANELLUS CAMPESTRIS Ridgway 

 PRAIRIE SHARP-TAILED GROUSE 



HABITS 



On my various trips to North Dakota, Manitoba, and Saskatche- 

 wan, I became quite familiar with the sharp-tailed grouse of the 

 eastern plains. It is not so much a bird of the open prairie as is the 

 prairie chicken; but we found it very common in the sandhills, 

 among the willow thickets, and on the low, rolling hills overgrown 

 with shrubbery. Its range is becoming more and more restricted as 

 the Central West becomes more thickly settled and more land comes 

 under cultivation. In some places it is decreasing in numbers where 

 prairie chickens are increasing. Edw}Ti Sandys (1904) writes: 



It has been claimed by more than one well-known' expert that the sharptail 

 and pinnated grouse are bitter foes, but this I am inclined to doubt. I am well 

 aware of the belief among western sportsmen that the one species drives the 

 other from its haunts, but believe that the true reason for the supplanting of one 

 species by the other is nothing more than the closer settlement of what a few 

 years ago were wild regions. In other words, one bird follows the farmer, while 

 the other retreats before him. 



Courtship. — The courtship performance of the sharp-tailed grouse 

 is no less interesting than that of other grouse. It is quite similar to 

 that of the prairie chicken and the heath hen; perhaps not quite so 

 grotesque but more animated. These birds have favorite spots, 

 generally small knolls, to which they resort for this purpose every 

 spring ; these are known as " dancing hills." Frank L. Farley writes 

 to me from Alberta : 



On my farm at Dried Meat Lake, an average of a dozen pairs nest every year. 

 There are two dancing hills on this farm that the Indians told me had been 

 used as long as they could remember ; one is a little knoll right overlooking the 

 lake, and the other is half a mile away. I have seen as many as 50 birds 

 dancing on each hill at a time ; that is, waiting until the ground was vacated 

 by the previous dancers. They would wait patiently for their turn. These 

 dances take place every April and May, and often the grain, when up, is tramped 

 entirely away. I can generally get up to within 25 feet of the dancers with 

 my car to watch them. 



Dr. D. G. Elliot (1897) gives a very good account of the " danc- 

 ing," as follows: 



In the early spring, in the month of April, when perhaps in many parts of 

 their habitat in the northern regions the snow still remains upon the ground, 

 the birds, both males and females, assemble at some favorite place just as day 

 is breaking, to go through a performance as curious as it is eccentric. The 

 males, with ruffled feathers, spread tails, expanded air sacs on the neck, heads 

 drawn toward the back, and drooping wings (in fact, the whole body puffed 



