Sage-Hen 153 
© 
present uncertain. Cary believes the Routt co. bird is referable to 
the other subspecies. 
Habits.——The Sharp-tailed Grouse is very generally 
mis-called the “ Prairie Chicken ’’ in the north-west. It 
is a bird of the prairie in summer, retiring in winter to 
ravines and wooded lands, and often roosting beneath 
the snow when the weather is severe. 
The food consists chiefly of vegetable matter—about 
90 per cent. ; it is a great browser, devouring leaves, buds 
and flowers of various bushes and trees, while in La 
Plata co. it chiefly feeds on the acorns of the scrub-oak. 
In the breeding season the males give a dancing display 
before the females. A nest, described by Gilman, was 
found on May 11th: it was a slight depression in the 
ground lined with grass and feathers, and hidden and 
sheltered by a small scrub-oak. The eggs were eleven 
in number ; these were creamy-buff to pale olive-brown, 
plain or very finely spotted with reddish-brown. They 
average 1°7 x 1°24, and are small for the size of the bird. 
Genus CENTROCERCUS. 
Head hardly crested; neck with a large protuberance in, front 
eapable of great distention, covered above by long hair-like filamentary 
plumes and below with scaly, stiff feathers; tail as long as, or even 
exceeding the wing, very strongly graduated, composed of 16 to 20 stiff, 
narrow, acuminate feathers. 
Only one species; confined to the dryer parts of western North 
America. 
Sage-Hen. Centrocercus urophasianus. 
A.O.U. Checklist no 309—Colorado Records—Fremont 45, p. 284; 
Baird 58, p. 624; Aiken 72, p. 209; Henshaw 75, p. 437; Scott 79, 
p. 96; Morrison 88, p. 139; 89,p.182; Cooke 97, pp. 71, 203 ; Warren 
08, p. 20; 09, p. 14; Rockwell 08, p. 161. 
Description.—_Male—Above mottled tawny, black and a little white, 
markings finest on the head, primaries and their coverts plain brown ; 
below, chin and the lower-breast black ; under tail-coverts black with 
