SHARP-TAILED GROUSE* 
487 
has a shrill crowing note, rather feeble ; and both sexes, when 
disturbed, or whilst on the wing, repeat frequently the cry of 
cack^ each. 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 six- 
teen 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 dif- 
ferent 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 tipped 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 yel- 
lowish white, with a small black spot on each side, giving 
these parts a dotted appearance ; but the dots fewer and smaller 
on the throat. The feathers of the back and rump are black, 
transversely varied on the margin and at tip, with pale bright 
rusty, sprinkled with black, forming a confused mixture of 
black and rusty on the whole upper parts of the bird ; the long 
loose-webbed upper tail-coverts being similar, but decidedly 
and almost regularly banded with black, and sprinkled with 
