254 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 
Like many others of our best game birds, the sharp- 
tailed grouse has been so unremittingly pursued that 
it is rapidly becoming more and more scarce, and 
promises before long, in all regions where it is pursued 
with dog and gun, to become as rare as its relative, 
the pinnated grouse. 
In habits the birds are all closely alike, except that 
we may assume that the northern form has modified 
its habits in accordance with its environment. Mr. 
Roderick MacFarlane found this species breeding in 
1884 near Fort Providence. The two last-named forms 
of the sharp-tailed grouse—which is also called white 
belly, speckle belly, willow grouse and pin tail—are 
common all through the northwestern United States. 
They are birds of the open land, yet at certain seasons 
of the year resort commonly to willows or brushy 
ravines, from which sometimes they get up in a thick 
flock, like a brood of gigantic quail. 
E. E. Thompson, writing of the prairie sharp- 
tailed grouse in Manitoba, describes its prenuptial 
dancing in the following language: ‘After the dis- 
appearance of the snow, and the coming of warmer 
weather, the chickens meet every morning at gray dawn 
in companies of from six to twenty on some selected 
hillock or knoll, and indulge in what is called ‘the 
dance.’ This performance I have often watched. It 
presents the most amusing spectacle I have yet wit- 
nessed in bird life. At first, the birds may be seen 
standing about in ordinary attitudes, when suddenly 
one of them lowers its head, spreads out its wings 
