AMONG THE BIRDS OF THE YOSEMITE 215 



forth with each step. The male is handsomely 

 marked with black and white on the neck, back, 

 and wings, weighs five or six pounds, and mea- 

 sures about thirty inches in length. The female 

 is clad mostly in plain brown, and is not so large. 

 They occasionally wander from the sage plains 

 into the open nut-pine and juniper woods, but 

 never enter the main coniferous forest. It is 

 only in the broad, dry, half-desert sage plains 

 that they are quite at home, where the weather 

 is blazing hot in summer, cold in winter. If any 

 one passes through a flock, all squat on the gray 

 ground and hold their heads low, hoping to es- 

 cape observation ; but when approached within 

 a rod or so, they rise with a magnificent burst of 

 wing-beats, looking about as big as turkeys and 

 making a noise like a whirlwind. 



On the 28th of June, at the head of Owen's 

 Valley, I caught one of the young that was then 

 just able to fly. It was seven inches long, of a 

 uniform gray color, blunt-billed, and when cap- 

 tured cried lustily in a shrill piping voice, clear 

 in tone as a boy's small willow whistle. I have 

 seen flocks of from ten to thirty or forty on the 

 east margin of the Park, where the Mono Desert 

 meets the gray foothills of the Sierra ; but since 

 cattle have been pastured there they are becom- 

 ing rarer every year. 



Another magnificent bird, the blue or dusky 

 grouse, next in size to the sage cock, is found all 



