North America* Grouse. 



659 



GROUSE ON NEST. (FROM A PHOTOGRAPH FROM UK.) 



" Git out, you quinine brute ! You're only fit for a prescrip- 

 tion !" 



Yet, for all his astringency, we love to see the sage-hen on the sul- 

 try march, bursting out from the bracken, starting the jackass-rabbit 

 from its form, and awakening the landscape with his free flight. 



The dusky grouse is found in the Rocky Mountains and the 

 various spurs of highlands that are connected therewith. 



It is a marvelously graceful bird, often quite black, or blue-black, 

 and flecked here and there with little pencilings of white feathers, 

 looking as though crystals of new snow had fallen upon it. These 

 seem to be the tips of white feathers just coming to the surface of 

 the black. Sometimes the bird is dusky, or of a dark slate color, 

 marked with white, and always bearing that distinguishing mark of 

 the grouse family, — the bright-colored streak over the eye, — which, 

 in this bird, is scarlet. Its tail is rounded, and ornamented with the 

 band of a darker hue that most of the grouse family possess. It lias 

 th«- gular sac on the side of the neck, and its cry in tin- spring-time 

 is like the blowing several times suddenly into an empty bottle. 



