WILLOW GROUSE. 
115 
of very different sizes. This species rarely if ever alights on bushes or treos 
after being fully grown, and appears to resort at all times by preference to 
the ground, living among the naked rocks of the open morasses. 
The young birds do not acquire their full summer plumage before they 
are two years old. Many of these middle-aged birds, as I would call them, 
which our party procured early in the month of July, differed greatly from 
the older birds, which had their broods then quite small. They were much 
lighter in colour, their tails were shorter, and they weighed less, but afforded 
much better eating. Some of them had young, but their broods were much 
smaller in point of number, seldom exceeding four or five, while the old 
birds frequently had a dozen or more. 
The flight of the Willow Grouse resembles that of the Red Grouse of 
Scotland, being regular, swift, and on occasion protracted to a very great 
distance. They have no whirring sound of their wings, even when put up 
by sudden surprise. Whenever we found a pair without young, they were 
extremely shy, and would fly from one hill to another often at a great 
distance. If pursued, they would be seen standing erect, and boldly 
watching our approach, until we got to the distance of a few hundred yards 
from them, when they Avould run from the naked rocks into the moss, and 
there squat so close, that unless one of the party happened to walk almost 
over them, they remained unseen, and could not be raised. When discovered 
and put up, they were easily shot, on account of the beautiful regularity of 
their flight. In rising from the ground, they utter a loud and quickly 
repeated chuck, which is continued for eight or ten yards. 
Young birds shot in Newfoundland, on the 11th of August, weighed 61 
ounces, and were fully fledged. Their primaries were of a sullied white, 
but their legs were not closely covered with hair-like feathers, as in the old 
.birds. Although this species breeds in the districts inhabited by the Canada 
Grouse, it never enters the thickets to which the latter resorts, but always 
remains in the open grounds. 
One day, while in search of young Wild Geese, in a large, oozy, and miry 
flat, covered with a floating bed of tangled herbage, we were much surprised 
at finding there several Willow Grouse. They were extremely shy, and 
flew from one part of the marsh to another. We procured with great diffi- 
culty two, which proved to be barren females. 
To give you an idea of the difficulties we had occasionally to encounter, 
in our endeavours to procure such birds as breed in that country, it will 
suffice to say, that one of us was so mired in the flat just mentioned, that it 
was with extreme difficulty another of us succeeded in extricating him, to the 
great danger of being himself swamped, in which case we must all have 
perished, had no aid arrived. We were completely smeared with black 
