SIEEBA GEOUSE 551 



seems to be very necessary to j^ouiig birds of most species), and a 

 species of native red clover, the green leaves and heads of which 

 supply them, for a time, with nearly all the food they require. . . . 

 About the middle of August the females, with their broods, begin 

 to change their haunts and range higher in the mountains, and then 

 feed partly on tlie foliage of fir trees {Abies concolor and magnifica) ", 

 and alpine hemlock {Tsuga mertensiana), "the latter being appar- 

 ently preferred. The old males feed upon the foliage of these coni- 

 fers nearly all the year and during the winter when everything is 

 covered with snow all grouse must subsist upon them. . . . 



"Some years, late summer frosts destroy the berry and seed crops 

 and then the grouse are limited to a diet of a few kinds of vegetable 

 food, grasshoppers and other insects. One such year, during Sep- 

 tember," they were found "feeding almost exclusively on the fallen 

 dried male flowers of the yellow pine (Piuits ponderosa)." 



Belding's last observation is fully substantiated by our own find- 

 ings in the Mount Whitney region, Avhere in September, 1911, the 

 grouse at 11,000 feet altitude were found to have fed extensively on 

 the pollen cones of the foxtail pine (Pinus halfouriana) . In another 

 instance the crop of an old male taken near timber line at the head 

 of Warren Fork of Leevining Creek, Mono County, September 26, 

 1915, was found by us to contain 1,520 needle-tips of the lodgepole 

 pine (Pinus murrayana) . The bitten-oft' ends varied from one-fourth 

 to one inch in length, and there were also a few fragments of very 

 young pistillate cones. The bill of the bird was smeared with pitch. 

 The crop of an adult female which had just been killed by some species 

 of hawk at Walker Lake, Mono County, September 10, 1915, was 

 found to contain eleven ripe rose hips, arid the gizzard was filled with 

 the hard seeds of the rose together with quartz grains. Some Sooty 

 Grouse killed near Kuntz, Trinity County, in late September, 1910, 

 contained madrone berries and fir needles (Dixon, MS). 



Because of their high mountain habitat the grouse conflict but 

 little Avith any agricultural enterprise of man. Locally, in the moun- 

 tains of Trinity County, the birds occasionally^ prove destructive in 

 August when they come down and feed about the edges of clearings. 

 A farmer in that region complained that the grouse were so abundant 

 around his ranch as to injure the young grain (Kellogg, 1916, p. 380). 

 In general, however, it may be said that man's chief interest in the 

 grouse arises from the bird's value to him for sport and food. 



The best grouse hunting is afforded when the birds come out on the 

 edges of clearings in the early morning. Then the hunter who can 

 shoot quickl}^ will drop the birds as they rise in their rapid yet 

 straightaway flight. AATien they take to the trees hunting is more 

 difficult. C. H. Merriam says (1899, p. Ill) that this species, unlike 



