TETRAONID.E — THE GROUSE — BONASA. 



541 



early in the morning are fund of dusting and snnning themselves on roads. 

 From the dense covert they usually inhabit they are not easy to shoot, hut 

 often alight in trees, and if (quickly shot at, give time for killing them before 

 flying. 



In -January and Feljruary tlie males maybe heaixl " drumming" often dur- 

 ing the day, and sometimes at night. This they do by standing on a log and 

 beating it with their short concave wings, beginning slowly, and gradually 

 striking more rapidly, until the sound becomes a hollow whir. Tliey may 

 sometimes be seen doing this, but are \'ery difficult to approach in the 

 woods. They make no other soimd, except a cackling, sometimes when tliey 

 fly, and the low notes of the female when in charge of her young. The 

 Eastern species {B. umhdlus), very similar to ours, lays ten to fifteen dull 

 yellowish eggs, in a depression among tlie dead leaves near a log or bush. 

 Tlie young fly in about a week, and at Puget's Sound are hatched in May. 



According to Lord, in his " Naturalist in Vancou\er's Island," etc., this 

 species forms a nest in May, on tlie ground under a fallen log or bush, of dry 

 leaves, lined with grass, bits of moss, and a few featliers, laying ten to four- 

 teen eggs, of a dirty wliitish, unspotted. He found about ten nests in one 

 swamp near the Spokan Prairie, Wasliington Territory. 



It is somewhat remarkable that the rutted grouse of the Lower Yukon, 

 in Alaska, should belong to the variety B. imnbelloidcs, rather than to one so 

 characteristic of the coast reuion of Washiniiton and Oreuon. 



Lagnpus albus. 



