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Dusky Grouse — Part 2
Images coming soon.
Taking the place in the western sportsman's heart of the ruffed grouse cherished in New England and the middle states, the dusky grouse, very like it in some habits and tastes, is a much larger bird, covered with a dense suit of feathers to resist the extreme cold of high altitudes, and weighing between three and four pounds. Next to the sage cock, this is the largest grouse in the United States. Possibly because it is so cumbrous, but more likely because its haunts are far removed from men, keeping it in ignorance, far from blissful, of his passion for hunting birds, this long-suffering recluse appears stupid to many. "Until almost fully grown," says a Colorado observer, "they are very foolish; flushed, they will tree at once, in the silly belief that they are out of danger, and will quietly suffer themselves to be pelted with clubs and stones until they are struck down one after another. With a shot gun, of course, the whole covey is bagged without much trouble; and as they are, in my opinion, the most delicious of all grouse for the table, they are gathered up unsparingly." When carnage like this masquerades under the title of "sport," evidently the extinction of the blue grouse, like that of many another choice game bird, is imminent. From an altitude of about seven thousand feet to timber line, coming down to the side hills and lower gulches, where food is more abundant for young broods in summer, the dusky grouse usually haunts rough slopes covered with dense forests of spruce and pine, and neither migrates nor strays far from its birthplace, though constantly roving. Solitary for part of the year, or found in small parties of three or four adults at most, it is chiefly while the young are partly dependent on the mother--for the male is an indifferent father--that one meets a covey of from seven to ten feeding on bearberries, raspberries, and other wild fruits, insects, especially grasshoppers, tender leaves, and leaf buds, reserving the buds of the pine and the scales or seeds of its cones for winter fare, when nearly all other food is buried under snow. Heavy snowfalls send the grouse to roost in the evergreens, their dusky plumage, that blends perfectly with the sombre coloring of the pines as they squat on the limbs, making them all but invisible. Only early in the summer, when the young are unable to fly into the branches, do these tree-loving mountaineers roost on the ground. Approach a covey suddenly, and the beautiful, downy, nimble-footed chicks, that are by no means fools, scatter and hide among the bushes and under leaves, while the mother, flying in an opposite direction, alights in a tree, quite as if she had no family to be looked for; so why waste time in the search when she is in evidence? Moving her head from side to side, and looking at the disturber of her peace with first one eye, then the other, she will remain squatting on the limb just overhead with apparent apathy, or what passes for stupidity, but what may be the most intelligent self-sacrifice for her brood. Molest her, and she flies away very rapidly with a loud cackle of alarm. It is she that forms a depression in the ground, near an old log, in the underbrush, or in the stubble of an open field just as likely, but never far from water, after pressing down some fine grass, pine needles, or leaves to line the rude cradle. A clutch consists of from eight to ten creamy, buff eggs, dotted, spotted, and sometimes blotched with brown. Confining herself very closely for three weeks or longer, she at length leads forth a brood in June to call it by clucks and otherwise care for it precisely as the domestic hen looks after her chicks. The nesting begins about the middle of May, though dates differ with the severity of the season and the altitude. Only one brood is raised in a year.