114 GAME BIRDS OF NORTH AMERICA. 



The females with their young usually pass the night in the 

 creek-bottoms, and it is in such places that they must be looked for 

 early in the morning and late in the afternoon. About nine or 

 ten o'clock A. M., they proceed on foot to the uplands, where they 

 remain until about two hours before sunset, when they come down 

 to the stream to drink, and remain all night. In returning from 

 the hills, they always fly. The young, when alarmed or uneasy, 

 have a fashion of erecting the feathers of the sides of the neck 

 just below the head, which, when seen at a little distance, gives 

 them a very odd appearance. The female, when the young birds 

 are nearly approached or captured, makes no attempt to draw 

 away the enemy by any of the artifices employed by Bonasa um- 

 bellus, but contents herself with wandering anxiously about at a 

 short distance, holding the tail quite erect, and clucking after the 

 manner of the domestic hen under similar circumstances. The 

 young when well grown are delicious eating. When a brood has 

 been scattered, the individuals which compose it lie well and fur- 

 nish fair shooting. Though swift fliers, they are easily killed in the 

 open. The birds will often allow one to approach within three or 

 four feet of them before rising, and they are beautiful objects as 

 they crouch, waiting for the sportsman to take one more step 

 toward them. The body flattened out on the ground, the head 

 and neck straight and pressed against the earth, the tail slightly 

 elevated, and all the while the bright brown eye watching for the 

 slightest sign that the bird's presence is discovered, together 

 make up a most attractive picture. 



The Blue Grouse is more or less abundant throughout the 

 Rocky Mountains, extending northward to Alaska, and south 

 nearly to Mexico. It is perhaps nowhere more numerous than in 

 Montana, in which territory one may sometimes see twenty broods 

 in a day's travel. 



The true Dusky Grouse has a broad terminal band of grey on 

 the tail, which variety Ric/iardsonn lacks ; the two forms are, 

 however, veiy similar, and grade into one another in the Central 

 Rocky Mountains. The length of the male of this species is about 

 twenty inches, the female being somewhat smaller, and being 

 varied above with black and tawny. Mr. Ridgway has recently 

 described a third variety from Alaska under the name variety 



