BIRDS. 135 



Order GALLING : Gallinaceous Birds. 

 Family ODONTOPHORID^: Bob-whites, etc. 



Bob-white: Col'mus virginianus virf/lniamis. — The bob-white of 

 the eastern lowhmds seems a strange bird to find in Glacier Park, 

 but it has been introduced into the Flathead Valley, and Mr. Bryant 

 says has followed np the north and middle forks. Mi-. Stevenson 

 has seen " a iiock of twenty or more at Swan Lake, in the heart of a 

 wooded area at least '20 miles from the grain fields," and is inclined 

 to believe that the quail stray into the park at times, not only on 

 the North Fork but near Belton. 



( 

 Family TETRAONID^: Grouse, Ptarmigan, etc. 



RiciiAKDSON Grouse: Dendragapuft oljHcurun rirhardfioni. — The 

 large sooty grouse which bursts away noisily from before your 

 pacli train as you climb np through the forest is common throughout 

 the heavily timbered higher regions of the park, and when camp- 

 ing in the mountains many broods will be met with. Up j\Iid\ale 

 Creek, back of Glacier Park Hotel, early in July we saw our first 

 bird of the season — an old hen, probably just off the nest, walking 

 quietly along in the grass. She cocked her head, tweaked her tail, 

 and walked quickly away on finding herself discovered, but stood still 

 and did a little observing herself when talked to reassuringly. Two 

 of her feathers, one the double kind that give the northern grouse 

 warm body cover, were found in a scooped-out hollow in the trail, 

 showing where she had been dusting. About two weeks later, on 

 the Sexton Glacier trail, as we rode out of the dark woods the 

 peeping voices of young were heard, and as the first horse shied a 

 big mother grouse flew conspicuously into the top of a low ever- 

 green, while her brood, circling out on widespread curving wings 

 like young quail, disappeared under cover. Early in August, on the 

 Swiftcurrent, an old grouse and seven half-grown young, finding our 

 camp nearly deserted, walked calmly past the tents and under the 

 kitchen awning on their way to the creek. On reaching it the mother 

 flew across, calling the brood till they followed, when they all 

 walked off toward the blueberry patch in the pine woods. On our 

 way to the Canadian boundary a number of broods of various sizes 

 were flushed in the mountains. 



In the breeding season the males may be heard giving their ven- 

 triloquial hoot from the tops of high trees. The birds nest, Mr. 

 Gird says, on rocky ridges, and Avhen flushed fly down timbered 

 canyons. Aftar the 1st of November he never looks for them in the 

 pine country, for they have gone to the red-fir timl)er in the deep 

 canyons, he says, where they live on the needles during the Avinter. 



