Bob Whites, Grouse, etc. 



district, including California, for the sooty grouse; while Richard- 

 son's bird confines itself chiefly to the eastern slope of the 

 Rockies. The latter is to be distinguished by its rather longer, 

 square tail, with broader feathers, only slightly banded with gray, 

 if at all, and its blacker throat. The sooty grouse, even darker 

 still, and with a broad band on its tail, is minutely freckled with 

 gray and rusty on its upper parts and very dark lead color below; 

 the hen being particularly richly marked with rusty red and chest- 

 nut brown. 



Taking the place in the western sportsman's heart of the 

 ruffed grouse cherished in New England and the middle states, 

 the dusky grouse, very like it in some habits and tastes, is a 

 much larger bird, covered with a dense suit of feathers to 

 resist the extreme cold of high altitudes, and weighing between 

 three and four pounds. Next to the sage cock, this is the largest 

 grouse in the United States. Possibly because it is so cumbrous, 

 but more likely because its haunts are far removed from men, 

 keeping it in ignorance, far from blissful, of his passion for hunt- 

 ing birds, this long-suffering recluse appears stupid to many. 

 "Until almost fully grown," says a Colorado observer, "they 

 are very foolish; flushed, they will tree at once, in the silly 

 belief that they are out of danger, and will quietly suffer them- 

 selves to be pelted with clubs and stones until they are struck 

 down one after another. With a shot gun, of course, the whole 

 covey is bagged without much trouble; and as they are, in my 

 opinion, the most delicious of all grouse for the table, they are 

 gathered up unsparingly." When carnage like this masquerades 

 under the title of "sport," evidently the extinction of the blue 

 grouse, like that of many another choice game bird, is imminent. 

 From an altitude of about seven thousand feet to timber line, 

 coming down to the side hills and lower gulches, where food is 

 more abundant for young broods in summer, the dusky grouse 

 usually haunts rough slopes covered with dense forests of spruce 

 and pine, and neither migrates nor strays far from its birthplace, 

 though constantly roving. Solitary for part of the year, or found 

 in small parties of three or four adults at most, it is chiefly while 

 the young are partly dependent on the mother — for the male is 

 an indifferent father — that one meets a covey of from seven to 

 ten feeding on bearberries, raspberries, and other wild fruits, 

 insects, especially grasshoppers, tender leaves, and leaf buds, 



268 



