THE SAGE GROUSE 
By T. GILBERT PEARSON 
The National Association of Audubon Societies 
Educational Leaflet No. 91 
Birds of the 
Sagebrush 
On a beautiful July evening our little party left the open waters of 
Lower Klamath Lake and slowly made its way up a combined creek and 
canal to Laird’s Landing. At the little wharf the Audubon patrol-boat 
‘^Grebe” came to rest, and we stepped out to find before us the ranch- 
buildings of a stock-raiser lying in a semicircle of ragged desert hills 
that rose in uneven terraces to the distant horizon. A Western Meadow- 
lark was singing in the yard and numerous Mourning Doves, the most 
ubiquitous birds in North America, were flying about. In the one small 
cluster of trees within sight Bullock’s Orioles 
were nesting. Snipe and Phalaropes were brood- 
ing their eggs in the neighboring marsh, and a 
Western Horned Owl had only the night before moved her young from 
the big barn to the trees where the Orioles hammocknest swung. 
These evidences of bird-life were noted within a few minutes after 
landing, but we had come in quest of something else we sought a cer- 
tain bird which the writer had never seen. There were plenty in the 
neighborhood we were told, and to find them we need only walk out on 
the sage-clad hills. The country had once been an interminable jumble 
of lava-beds disgorged from a heated and groaning earth. On every hand 
lay blocks of black volcanic rock, but the rain and frost of centuries had 
worn away the igneous mass, and made the soil that now furnished a 
scanty foot-hold for the sage. Over these silent wastes we walked. Twice 
we were saluted by the song of the Sage Thrasher, and thrice the trilling, 
canary-like notes of the Brewer’s Sparrow were borne to our ears. 
Suddenly, only a few feet distant a large bird burst from cover 
and went rushing away through the air at a good rate. To my startled 
gaze it seemed almost as large as a Turkey, Sage-cock’s 
although probably it weighed not more than four Flight 
pounds. Its flight was distinctive. Turning its body 
to the left it gave four hasty wing-beats, then sailed on an even keel, 
only to turn to the right in another moment and repeat the performance. 
Thus alternately sailing and flying, turning its body first to one 
side and then to the other, it pursued its course for perhaps a third of 
a mile and dropped again among the sagebrush. We had found the 
object we sought, the great Sage Grouse of the desert plains, the largest 
Grouse in the world save the Capercaillie of Europe. From bill tip to 
tail-tip a grown male measures two and one-half feet, and the expanse 
of its wings is a yard or more. 
361 
