128 LAND BIRDS 
Nest: A slight depression in the ground ; usually unlined, and under a 
sagebush. 
Eggs: 8 to 12; olive-yellow, spotted with dark brown. Size 2.16 X 1.50. 
As its name implies, the Sage Grouse loves the barren 
alkali plains, ‘sun-parched in summer and swept by icy 
blasts and wolf-voiced blizzards during the winter,” where 
no green thing can grow save the sagebrush and the cacti. 
Here, of necessity, his chief diet is sage leaves, insects, 
and the pulp of the cactus fruit; his drink the strong 
alkali water of the desert. The storms of winter drive 
him through the timber belt to the stunted vegetation 
under the snow, and he lives for weeks at a time in the 
warm shelter of a deep drift, eating the young green 
shoots that he scratches from their wintry cover, five or 
‘six feet below the level. With the spring comes a revival 
of life to the big Grouse. A restless hunting for some- 
thing takes possession of him, and he wanders through 
the brush, fighting every male grouse that he meets. In 
March he encounters his fate in the form of a tiny gray 
hen, before whom he struts and salaams, sliding along 
on his breast until he wears a bare place among his fine 
feathers. What greater proof of his infatuation could 
he give than this? ‘Then the big air sacs are filled to 
their fullest capacity, the spiny feathers about them 
bristle out like thorns, the long tail is spread and the 
wings trailed. One familiar with the noise of other 
grouse uaturally would expect from this great fellow a 
thunderous booming, but the fact is the sounds produced 
amount to nothing more than a broken, indistinct croak- 
ing.” It is all done with an air of desperate earnestness, 
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