1908.] 



BIEDS. 



339 



the nest was a small hollow at the base of a clump of willows, and 

 that the eggs were fresh. 



This species occurs throughout the region nearly to the limits of 

 the forest, and figures frequently in the narratives of northern travel. 

 Franklin noted it about Fort Franklin, Great Bear Lake, about the 

 last of October, 1825 ; « Douglas stated that occasionally a solitary 

 individual was seen near the sources of the Athabaska, and that the 

 species abounded about Lesser Slave Lake ; ^ Richardson described a 

 male ** killed on the eastern declivity of the Rocky Mountains " 

 [probably in the Jasper House region], and figured the head of a 

 female from Great Bear Lake ; ^ Ross listed the species as occurring 

 in the Mackenzie River region north to the Arctic coast, and as having 

 been collected at Fort Simpson ; ^ Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway de- 

 scribe eggs from Fort Resolution, collected by Kennicott ; ^ MacFar- 

 lane frequently observed the species in the forested country to the 

 southward of Fort Anderson.'^ The bird catalogue of the National 

 Museum records skins sent by various officers of the Hudson's Bay 

 Company about forty years ago from Methye Portage, Fort Resolu- 

 tion, Fort Rae, Big Island, Fort Simpson, mountains west of Fort 

 Simpson. Fort Liard, and Fort Halkett; skins from Fort Rae, Fort 

 Resolution, and Liard River are still in the collection. Bendire 

 records eggs taken by Ross near Fort Simpson as early as May 23 ; ^ 

 eggs taken by H. MacKay at the Hudson's Bay Post on Pelican Lake, 

 eastern Saskatchewan, in June, 1891, were received by the National 

 Museum through MacFarlane. 



During his trip to western Alberta in 1895 J. Alden Loring took a 

 male about miles west of Henry House October 1. In this region 

 the range of the Hudsonian spruce grouse overlaps that of the 

 Franklin grouse, a closely related species. In 1896 he took speci- 

 mens of the former 100 miles west of Edmonton about May 30, re- 

 ported the species as common in the foothills and valleys between 

 Jasi:)er House and Smoky River August 20 to October 8, and took a 

 male and female in the Blueberry Hills, on the Jasper House trail, 

 about 100 miles west of Edmonton, on October 29. 



Canachites franklini (Dough). Franklin Grouse. 



The Franklin grouse occurs within the area now under review only 

 about the headwaters of the Athabaska, where its range overlaps 

 slightly that of the spruce grouse. It was first described by Douglas 



« Narrative Second Expedition to Polar Sea, p. 60, 1828. 



* Trans. Linn. Soc. London, XVI, p. 147, 1829. 



c Fauna Boreali-Americana, II, pp. 347, 348, 1831. 



<^Nat. Hist. Rev., II (second ser.), p. 283, 1862. 



^ Hist. N. A. Birds, Land Birds, III, p. 418, 1874. 



f Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., XIV, p. 430, 1891. 



fi-Life Hist N. A. Birds [I], p. 56, 1892. 



