GROUSE, PARTRIDGES, QUAILS, ETC. 
125 
With the Indian as well as the white hunter they are favorite 
game birds, both because of their large size and the delicate flavor of 
their meat. Vernon Bailey. 
297a. D. o. fuliginosus Bidgw. Sooty Grouse. 
Adult male. — Similar to D. obscurus , but darker, sooty blackish with 
narrower tail band — usually about .00 on middle feathers and not more 
than .40 on outer pair — and without white on sides of neck. Adult 
female: similar to female obscurus , but upper parts darker, sometimes 
washed with dark rusty. Young : darker and more rusty. Length: 15.50- 
19.00, wing 7.00-7.50, tail 5.50-7.00. 
Distribution. — Northwest coast mountains, from Alaska south to Cali¬ 
fornia and Nevada. 
Nest. —Similar to that of the dusky grouse. Eggs : S to 15. 
The sooty grouse, like the wild turkey, is a bird of distinction and 
peculiar interest wherever found. Climb a mountain ridge toward 
sunset as the birds are going high to roost, and just before you reach 
the top, with a cluck and a whirr, down sails a great dark bird with 
widespread wings and banded tail; and as you climb on, a banded 
feather under a low fir bough discloses the hollow where it had 
been scratching in the soft woods earth. Ride along a trail and as 
you scan the trees beside you, though your horse hears no sound 
and detects no motion, your eye may distinguish a statue-like figure 
close to the tree trunk so like the bark in color that only its form 
reveals it. Explore a wind-swept granite crag at sunset and in one 
of its protected wooded niches warm in the evening light a mother 
grouse whirrs up into a tree and walks up and down a branch, cran¬ 
ing her long neck with its small pointed head, clucking anxiously 
as she goes, and at the turns bobbing her tail and wobbling hard to 
keep her balance. As she calls, one after another her invisible 
young burst from the brushy thicket at your feet and on stiff convex 
wing whirl away over the rocks out of sight. Go to a canyon 
where the male is hooting and nearly a mile away you will hear his 
loud ventriloquial whoo, whoo, whoo. Followed up, he proves to be 
near the top of a tall pine fifty to seventy-five feet above your head, 
sitting close to the trunk, concealed by the branches. Through the 
glass he is seen to sit with spread tail and hanging wings, filling his 
yellow pouches till his neck looks almost as big as his body, when 
with a pumping motion of the head he gives his hollow muffled 
hoot. If you stay to listen you may hear the booming at short 
intervals for hours. 
In winter, Major Bendire says, the grouse spend most of their 
time in the tops of tall firs and pines, coming down only in the 
middle of the day to get water from a mountain spring, for the 
treetops supply buds and needles for their food. 
