84 RECONNAISSANCE FROM CARROLL, MONTANA, 
TETRAONIDZ. 
99. TETRAO OBSCURUDS, Say. 
Dusky Grouse; BLUE GROUSE. 
We found this species very abundant from the time that we reached the mountains until we 
left them again. The first seen were a mother with a brood of small young, taken in the Judith 
Mountains. From this point to and through the Yellowstone Park they were frequently met with. 
There seems to be a wide variation in the time at which these birds deposit their eggs. In the 
Musselshell Cafion and along Deep Creek I saw many broods of half-grown chicks, and in some 
cases the young were nearly as large as the parent bird. This was late in July. On the 4th of 
August, saw a brood on an extensive prairie in the Little Belt Mountains near Camp Baker, 
which must have been less than a week old; at all events, they were so young that I had no diffi- 
culty in catching several of them alive. Two weeks later I saw a brood on Trail Creek near the 
Yellowstone River, that were certainly not more than ten days or two weeks old. 
The females with their young seem to pass the night in the creek-bottoms, and it is in such 
places that they must be looked for early in the morning and late in the afternoon. About 9 or 10 
o’clock a. m., they proceed on foot to the uplands, where they remain until about two hours before 
sunset, when they come down to the stream to drink, and remain all night. In returning from the 
hills, they always fly. The young, when alarmed or uneasy, have a fashion of erecting the feathers 
of the sides of the neck just below the head, which, when seen at a little distance, gives them a 
very odd appearance. The female, when the young birds are nearly approached or captured, 
makes no attempt to draw away the enemy by any of the artifices employed by Bonasa umbellus, but 
contents herself with wandering anxiously about at a short distance, holding the tail quite erect, 
and clucking after the manner of the domestic hen under similar circumstances. The young when 
well grown are delicious eating, and many were killed by us for food when large game could not 
be obtained. When a brood has been scattered, the individuals which compose it lie well and 
furnish fair shooting. Though swift fliers, they are easily killed in the open, and I secured most 
of those that I killed with mustard-seed shot. The birds would sometimes let me approach within 
three or four feet of them before rising, and they were pretty objects as they crouched waiting for 
me to take one more step toward them. The body flattened out on the ground, the head and neck 
straight and pressed against the earth, the tail slightly elevated, and all the while the bright brown 
eve watching for the slightest sign that the bird’s presence was discovered, together made up a 
picture which, though familiar enough, ever possesses a new interest for me. 
But one brood was seen in heavy pine timber. In this case, the family, which consisted of the 
mother and six or eight well-grown young, took refuge in the lower limbs of a large pine, from 
which they refused to move until several shots had been fired at them. 
Having in mind Dr. Cooper’s statement that, in Oregon and Northern California, this species 
-is not seen in winter, I made diligent inquiry among the settlers in the mountains of Montana for 
information on this point. All of those with whom I spoke informed me that the Blue Grouse was 
apparently quite as abundant in winter as in summer. 
It is to be noticed that I found this species almost invariably in the open creek-bottoms, and 
sometimes in quite extensive prairies, although always among the mountains. This state of things, 
which is exactly the reverse of the experience of most other observers, was no doubt due, in part 
at least, to the fact that the birds had their tender young with them, and that these would be more 
safe in the valleys than on the mountain-sides. 
During the trip, not a single adult male was secured. On the high mountains, however, at and 
near timber-line, I several times started single birds and small packs of this species. The only one 
secured in such situations was a barren female; but I think it probable that most of those seen 
here were old males. 
The specimens preserved on the trip seem to be intermediate between varieties obscurus and 
richardsoni. 
