122 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 



weighed three pounds ten ounces; but some killed by 

 me in the Cascade Mountains seemed to be much larger. 

 While on Lake Chelan in 1883, hunting white goats, I 

 flushed a covey of grouse and here heard for the first 

 time the call note of the female for her young. It 

 was low, but distinct, something like that made by the 

 bobwhite just before it flushes. At this time, the last 

 of August, the birds were well grown. I have always 

 found these birds near water. In 1881, while going to 

 Indian Valley, Idaho, I rode past some, one being near 

 enough to touch with a switch I had in my hand, yet 

 they all walked out of the trail as quietly as domestic 

 fowls would have done and then resumed their 

 dusting." 



Richardson's grouse, the form of the dusky grouse 

 found in the northern Rocky Mountains from southern 

 Montana, north far into British America, resem- 

 bles in habits the other forms and is quite abundant. 

 About the Continental Divide, specimens are some- 

 times seen which show approach to obscurus, or to the 

 sooty grouse. In many places, where seldom disturbed 

 by man, they ar.e exceedingly gentle and unsuspicious, 

 and a brood will walk slowly along before one, feed- 

 ing and calling to one another in a particularly inno- 

 cent and attractive way. 



It is stated that the birds spend their winters largely 

 among the branches of the pine trees, and that they feed 

 to a very great extent on the pine needles. 



Mrs. Florence Merriam Bailey says of the winter 

 habits of the dusky grouse in New Mexico : 



