The Dusky Grouse 



tury old, the bird would no more than step aside to watch the traveler 

 pass, or at most flutter up to a low-lying branch the better to observe. 

 There are few traces left, however, of this once confiding character. Save 

 for its unconquerable propensity for hooting, the bird is shrewd enough 

 to maintain itself in the very heart of dangerous country. To my knowl- 

 edge a small company of Sooty Grouse survived in Ravenna Park, Seattle, 

 till the year 1910, and they pastured on land worth at least $15,000 per 

 acre. 



The Grouse's year begins in March or April, according to altitude, 

 at which season the males begin to hoot. This operation is conducted 

 chiefly in the trees, but as the season advances and love-making becomes 

 more earnest, the birds resort to the ground or choose stations on some 

 prominent stump or bowlder. The bird, as a rule, is one of the most 

 phlegmatic of fowls, and his courting antics, grotesque enough in them- 

 selves, are conducted with a gravity which makes them even more absurd. 

 Whatever the bird's situation in hooting, the air-sacs of the throat, chest, 

 and neck are first inflated. These auxiliary parts are capable of enor- 

 mous dissension, insomuch that the total bulk of the sacs, together with 

 their covering feathers, during excitement, exceeds that of the body itself. 

 The hooting, or grunting, notes of this Grouse are among the lowest 

 tones of Nature's thoroughbase, being usually about C of the first octave, 

 but ranging from E flat down to B flat of the contra octave. Hoot, hoot, 

 hoot, tu-hoot, the legend runs, although there is a prefatory note of the 

 same character which is inaudible at a distance; and the bird not in- 

 frequently adds another at the end, after the slightest appreciable pause, 

 as though he required a fraction of a second in which to recover from 

 the effort of the double note. There is in the act of utterance a corre- 

 sponding pulsation of the air-sacs, but these can serve only as a sounding 

 board, for the noise is made in the syrinx, and may be passably imitated 

 in that of a freshly killed specimen by placing the thumb and forefinger 

 over the apertures, and blowing at the proper intervals through the 

 entering windpipe. The sound may also be well reproduced by the 

 human voice, and we have offended many a "hooter" ere now by chal- 

 lenging in his preserves. 



As the hooter becomes vehement he struts like a turkey-cock, spread- 

 ing the tail in fan-shape, dropping the wings till they scrape the ground, 

 and inflating his throat to such an extent as to disclose a considerable 

 space of bare orange-colored skin on either side of the neck. This last 

 certainly makes a stunning feature of the gallant's attire, for Nature 

 has contrived that the feathers immediately surrounding the bald area 

 should have white bases beneath their sooty tips. During excitement, 

 then, as the concealing feathers are raised and reversed, a brilliant white 



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