PECULIARITIES IN PAIRING. 97 



In like manner, the men lying; in concealment near 

 the scratch! ng-places have been known to discharge 

 several guns, before either the report of the explosion, 

 or the sight of their wounded arid dead fellows, would 

 rouse them to flight. It has further been remarked, 

 that when a company of sportsmen have surrounded 

 a pack of grouse, the birds seldom or never rise upon 

 their pinions while they are encircled ; but each runs 

 along until it passes the person that is nearest, and 

 then flutters off' with the utmost expedition*/* 



We have here copied Wilson's excellent figure of 

 the cock of the pinnated grouse in the act of strut- 

 ting and inflating his throat. " So very novel and 

 characteristic," he says, " did the action of these 

 birds appear to me at first sight, that, instead of 

 shooting them down, I sketched their attitude hastily 

 on the spot, while concealed among a brush-heap, 

 with seven or eight of them within a short dis- 

 tance f." 



Another species of American grouse (Tetrao 

 obscurus, SAY) has very similar manners ; and has 

 given occasion to Charles Bonaparte to remark of 

 the whole family, that no birds are more decidedly 

 and tyrannically polygamous. The males very soon 

 desert the females, caring nothing about them and 

 their progeny, to lead a solitary life J. 



The bustards appear to have similar habits to the 

 preceding, being equally polygamous, and the males 

 calling the females by a peculiar cry during the night. 

 They have also places of assemblage somewhat like the 

 scratching-places of the American grouse; for though 

 we have no record of such assemblages having been 

 actually observed, their places of rendezvous have 

 been seen in corn-fields and pastures, trod down like 



* See New York Med. Repos. vol. viii. 



t Am. Ornith. iii. 114. 

 J Bonaparte, Am. Orn. iii. 29. 



K 



