408 Quail and Grouse of the Pacific Coast 



he can laugh at you for a while and then amuse 

 you with the hubbub of his resounding wing where 

 your best-aimed shot will never reach it. 



Though plentiful nowhere on the coast, the red 

 ruffed grouse is found throughout as large a range 

 as the dusky grouse. High up in the tumbling 

 hills, where new pentstemons in carmine and pink 

 nod over crystal streams that foam from the heads 

 of the higher gulches, he steals out from the deep, 

 dark ranks of the spruce to take a look at the outer 

 world. And still higher in the rugged mountains, 

 where the last little blue lily gives up the struggle 

 for life in the cold wet bog among the dwarf pines, 

 he may shake the sunshine from his roaring wing 

 and whizz down the glen at your approach. But 

 the best hunting is lower down, where the chin- 

 quapin begins to tower into the stately tree it often 

 becomes in Oregon, and where the golden green 

 of the madrono makes such happy light against 

 the sombre masses of the red fir. In autumn the 

 bird may descend to the thickets of willow and 

 alder that line the streams in the little valleys, or 

 to the fringes of scrub oak and laurel that line the 

 edges of the lower hills. Here one may get open 

 shooting as he curls around on the outside of the 

 line of brush, or in the black oaks and firs along 

 the base of the hills may get some shooting out of 

 trees well worthy of the name. I do not mean the 

 miserable murder of shooting one off a limb with 



