SHARP-TAILED GROUSE. 381 
young are hatched about the middle of June ; they utter a 
piping noise, somewhat like chickens. Attempts have been 
repeatedly made to domesticate them, but have as constantly 
failed, all the young, though carefully nursed by their step- 
mother, the common hen, dying one after another, probably for 
want of suitable food. This species has several cries: the cock 
has a shrill crowing note, rather feeble ; and both sexes, when 
disturbed, or whilst on the wing, repeat frequently the cry of 
cack, cack. This well-known sound conducts the hunter to 
their hiding-place, and they are also detected by producing 
with their small, lateral, rigid tail-feathers a curious noise, 
resembling that made by a winnowing fan. When in good 
order, one of these grouse will weigh upwards of two pounds, 
being very plump. Their flesh is of a light brown colour, 
and very compact, though, at the same time, exceedingly juicy 
and well tasted, being far superior in this respect to the com- 
mon ruffed, and approaching in excellence the delicious pin- 
nated grouse. 
The adult male sharp-tailed grouse, in full plumage, is 
sixteen inches long, and twenty-three in breadth. The bill 
is little more than an inch long, blackish, pale at the base of 
the lower mandible, and with its ridge entering between the 
small feathers covering the nostrils: these are blackish, edged 
with pale rusty, the latter predominating ; the irides are 
hazel. The general colour of the bird is a mixture of white, 
and different shades of dark and light rusty, on a rather deep 
and glossy blackish ground, the feathers of the head and neck 
have but a single band of rusty, and are tipt with white ; 
those, however, of the crown, are of a much deeper and more 
glossy black, with a single marginal spot of rusty on each side, 
and a very faint tip of the same, forming a tolerably pure 
black space on the top of the head. The feathers between the 
eye and bill, those around the eye, above and beneath, on the 
sides of the head, and on the throat, are somewhat of a dingy 
yellowish white, with a small black spot on each side, giving 
these parts a dotted appearance; but the dots fewer and 
