Sept, 1915 
CHARACTERISTIC BIRDS OF THE DAKOTA PRAIRIES 
175 
over back, neck pouches inflated like oranges, long black neck tufts projected 
beyond the yellow pouches. Joyful moment to actually see them in the flesh ! 
Nondescript calls, strange cackles, together with muffled booming that sounded 
little louder than it did a mile across the farms, came from the cock strutting 
back and forth across the hilltop. The female, looking in the distance like an 
ordinary hen, shadowed the background, giving point to the dramatic perform- 
ance and the conduct of the two cocks, for a second had come up over the hill and 
the two flew at each other, hopping up into the air — dancing? — in their excite- 
ment. 
On another knoll a third cock appeared, and strutted around booming and 
crowing so ostentatiously, so eompellingly, that we could but discover the cause — 
a demure, indifferent hen picking around in the corner of the field below. 
Though we saw but five birds, the farmer who owned the hill told us that there 
were as many as a dozen that frequented it. 
Ten days later when driving with a farmer in North Dakota — driving in the 
free western way over fields pitted w r ith badger holes one moment and through 
silver-leaf bushes up to the horse ’s head the next — a Prairie Hen sprang up from 
before the horse’s feet and with white outer tail feathers conspicuous sailed low 
over the grass for a few yards, then lit and ran with dragging wings and van- 
ished. We got out and hunted around till we flushed her from some low bushes, 
when she flew with a Imk-kuk-kuk- kuk-kuk-kuk-kuk. The farmer going back to 
the spot from which she had first risen called me, for shrill piping voices were 
coming from invisible chicks in the grass. At the alarming sound of human 
voices, however, the well-trained brood fell silent and we had to leave them undis- 
covered. 
After that most of the “Prairie Chickens” I saw in North Dakota were 
Sharp-tailed Grouse ! When the big birds whirr up from under your feet, the 
projecting tail feathers are a great help in identification and might well deter 
the broods from following after strange mothers, or so it seemed when a parent 
of each species flew up beside our road, one of them trailing a large family of 
young. 
I had several interesting encounters with Pedicecetes. One day, when im- 
pelled to answer the call of the prairie in spite of the heat that was rousing sore 
complaints at the farm, I headed for a small clump of cottonwoods that suggested 
good nesting sites. The three farm dogs reached the trees before me flushing a 
grouse with pointed tail which flew with beat and soar, several beats and a soar, 
uttering a low guttural cluck-uk-uk-uk-ak. As I stepped from the hot sun into 
the shade of the cottonwood thicket, the little trees rustled hard with the prairie 
wind, fanning out coolness, and the dogs made a bolt for the inside of the clump 
where they lay with tongues out and sides beating. The old Grouse had shown 
excellent judgment on a hot summer day. 
A few mornings later (July 3), the farmer came in and asked if I wanted 
to see some Prairie Chickens, that being the general term for the two forms of 
grouse. He had seen an old hen and her brood in the potato patch. As we 
walked slowly down between the rows of potatoes, small yellowish brown chicks 
which booked like young turkeys, one with a suggestion of crest, flew from almost 
under our feet. Farther on, the mother started out from cover and crouching 
over like a hunter ‘making a sneak’, ran with swinging gait down the furrows. 
When pressed she flew at a wide angle from the young, though all headed for 
the strip of woods at the foot of the hill. 
At this point the farmer returned to the house, but T walked slowly and 
