278 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 
admiring the beautiful bird, which could have been 
caught in my butterfly net, then walked back and forth 
and finally passed around the bush to observe it from 
behind. Not until then did it become frightened and fly 
away with a loud cackling. The nest was a depression 
at the foot of a sage bush, lined with dead grass and 
sage leaves. The spot was marked and visited several 
times, always passing within a few feet without 
alarming the bird.” 
While the mother bird is sitting, the males are scat- 
tered over the prairie, two or three often being found 
together, and when alarmed starting off with heavy, 
lumbering flight to fly half a mile or a mile. 
When hatched, the young leave the nest and follow 
the mother. When quite young they are as expert at 
hiding as are most of the grouse at this age. 
They are active and hardy, and for the first few 
weeks of their life bear a certain resemblance to the 
young turkey, less perhaps in color than in length of 
neck and the active way in which they move about on 
their long legs. The mother is devoted, and Captain 
Bendire quotes Mr. Wm. G. Smith, who caught six 
young sage chickens one June in Carbon County, 
Wyoming, as saying: 
“The female flew at my legs and followed me 200 
yards to where my wagon was standing, constantly 
making hostile demonstrations, while the young kept 
calling.” 
The young families roost on the ground, on the 
sides of shallow ravines or on the prairie above, and 
