MARCH IN THE PINE WOODS 



general color is olive-brown and gray, while the throat is black, 

 bordered all around with a rim of white. The neck is finely 

 mottled with white, the breast is plumbeous, and the belly buff 

 and chestnut, marked in a curious scaled pattern. The familiar 

 call of this bird is a coo cuck coo^ the accented syllable pitched 

 on a higher key than the other two. When suddenly startled 

 from the covert, a flock of these birds takes to wing through the 

 brush with a loud whirring of wings and a promiscuous, high, 

 chuckling call, but if the approach of danger is not too sudden 

 they prefer to elude pursuit by running into the dense under- 

 brush. 



The grouse is a sooty bird of the pine woods, and although 

 I have observed it to be quite tame in the high Sierras, it was 

 rather shy and retiring in Mendocino County. Once during 

 the late autumn I startled a flock of five or six of them in the 

 dense woods, but during the winter months they entirely dis- 

 appeared. In late February and in March, however, their 

 curious booming was to be heard on every side, although the 

 authors of the sound were extremely difficult to detect. The 

 birds have a habit of alighting upon a pine limb close to the 

 trunk, at a height of from twenty to fifty feet from the ground, 

 in which situation it is \,Sl\ nigh impossible to detect them, so 

 dark is the shade of the foliage and so perfectly does their 

 plumage blend with the tree trunks. Their booming, too, is as 

 elusive as the will-o'-the-wisp. It may be described as a low, 

 deep, muffled boof^ hoof, sounding first from one direction and 

 then from another. The general color of the bird is mottled 

 brown, grayer upon the breast and darker on the back, wdth a 

 broad, dark band at the tip of the tail. 



Other game birds there are in this Eel River country. 



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