TETRAONID^ — THE GROUSE. , 417 



it may be taken by slipping a noose, fastened to the end of a stick, over its 

 head. When disturbed, it flies heavily a short distance, and then alights 

 ao-ain amons the interior branches of a tree, liichardson invariably found 

 its crop filled with the buds of the spruce-trees in the winter, and at that 

 time its flesh was very dark and had a strong resinous taste. In districts 

 where the Pinus hanksiana grows it is said to prefer the buds of that tree. 

 In the summer it feeds on berries, which render its flesh more palatable. 



Captain Blakiston states that he has found this species as far west as Fort 

 Carlton, and Mr. Eoss has traced it northward on the Mackenzie to the 

 Arctic coast. 



Mr. Audubon met with it in Maine, in the vicinity of Eastport, where 

 they were only to be met with in the thick and tangled forests of spruce and 

 hackmatack. They were breeding in the inner recesses of almost impene- 

 trable woods of hackmatack or larclies. He was informed that they breed 

 in that neighborhood about the middle of May, a full month sooner than 

 they do in Labrador. In their love-season the males are said to exhibit 

 many of the singular manners also noticeable in the other members of tliis 

 family. They strut before the female on the ground, something in the man- 

 ner of the common domestic Turkey-cock, occasionally rising in a spiral 

 manner above her in tlie air ; at the same time, both when on the ground and 

 in the air, they beat their wings violently against their body, thereby pro- 

 ducing a peculiar drumming sound, which is said to be much clearer than 

 the well-known drumming of the Euffed Grouse. These sounds can be 

 heard at a considerable distance from the place where they are made. 



The female constructs a nest of a bed of dry twigs, leaves, and mosses, 

 which is usually carefully concealed, on the ground and under low horizontal 

 branches of fir-trees. The number of eggs is said to vary from eight to 

 eighteen in number. It is imagined by the common people that where 

 more than ten eggs are found in the same nest they are the product of two 

 females, who aid each other in their charge. The eggs are described by 

 Audubon as of a deep fawn-color, irregularly splashed w^itli different tints 

 of brown. They have but a single brood in a season, and the young follow 

 the mother as soon as they leave the shell. 



As soon as incubation commences, the males desert the females and keep 

 in small flocks by themselves, removing to different woods, where they 

 usually become much more shy and wary than at any other season of the 

 year. 



In their movements on the ground these birds are said to resemble our 

 common Quail, rather than the Euffed Grouse. They do not jerk their tails 

 in the manner of the latter bird, as they walk, nor are they known to burrow 

 in the snow ; but when they are pursued they invariably take refuge in trees, 

 from which they cannot be readily made to fly. When driven from one 

 place of refuge to another, they accompany their flight with a few ducks, and 

 those sounds they repeat when they alight. When a flock thus alights, it 



VOL. III. 53 



