GROUSE, PTARMIGANS, ETC.: DUSKY GROUSE 199 
hard quartz grinding stones were among the items that the field examination of 
other specimens revealed. The quartz grinding stones were found in gizzards 
apparently filled with hard coniferous needles. These needles seem to be the regular 
winter food as under a winter roosting tree on Pecos Baldy the winter dung was 
composed entirely of spruce needles. [Three birds taken in September near Golden, 
Colorado, had their “crops crammed with the berries of kinnikinick” (Lincoln)]. 
General Habits.— In the depths of the coniferous forest you may 
suddenly discover a Dusky Grouse with its small pointed head and hen¬ 
like body sitting quietly on a log facing you, as if secure in its disguise— 
a dusky bird in the dusky woods surrounded by shadowy tree trunks. 
From a forest trail you may flush one that has been dusting itself in the 
soft earth, or hearing a muffled ventriloquial hooting may creep up 
within sight of the lordly cock at the foot of a conifer with purplish red 
neck pouches dilated. Again, in the open, you may be startled by a 
loud whir and look up to see great dark forms with a wide spread of wing 
disappearing over your head; or, on a steep mountain side, catch sight 
of a big Grouse sailing off below you with stiff outstretched wings and 
a spread tail whose gray band makes a striking mark to follow among 
the branches. If still more fortunate you may surprise a family in a 
mountain meadow, for strawberries are evidently one of their favorite 
summer foods. 
The years that we were in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, broods of 
young Dusky Grouse were surprisingly scarce. During a month spent 
on Pecos Baldy—July 16-August 15, 1903—eleven cocks, nine hens, and 
only six broods of young were seen, the broods varying in number from 
but one to six; one, two, three, and four being attributed to specific 
families. As the birds were protected and the ground cover was good in 
that section, it is possible that the severe hailstorms may have had 
something to do with their scarcity and the smallness of their families. 
Also, as Mr. Ligon notes, many young are doubtless killed by coyotes, 
skunks, and wildcats. In the overgrazed sections of the mountains, as 
he says, the absence of weeds, grass, and brush at breeding time increases 
immensely the dangers to which nesting birds and the young are 
exposed (1927, p. 121). When we crossed to the east slope of the laos 
Mountains, on September 17, 1903, six adult Grouse were found in the 
woods at 11,000 feet; four, one hen and three nearly grown young at 
11,500 feet; and a dozen cocks and hens at 12,000 feet, above timberline 
on an open slope where they were catching grasshoppers. The next year 
while we were high in the Taos Mountains, about two weeks in early 
August, 1904, our Indian, Sun-Elk, saw ten old Grouse but only one 
brood—of four or five less than half grown chickens between 10,300 
and 11,900 feet, a hundred feet below timberline. Of the ten birds 
seen there were three pairs, three cocks, and the one hen with the brood 
of chickens. 
