Читать книгу Birds and All Nature, Vol. IV, No. 5, November 1898 - Various - Страница 7

A WELL-KNOWN observer, who has spent many years in the West, says that the Sharp-tailed Grouse, being a bird of the wild prairies and open woodlands, has gradually retreated westward as the settlements have advanced, and will soon be a rare bird, to be looked for only in the sand-hills and unsettled portions of the country.

During the summer months this bird inhabits the open prairies, retiring in winter to the ravines and wooded lands, and when the snow is deep and the weather severe often hides and roosts beneath the snow. This sometimes proves the destruction of the birds, the entrance to the roosting-place being filled by falling snow and frozen over.

The Sharp-tails feed chiefly on Grasshoppers, seeds, buds, blossoms, and berries.

"When walking about on the ground they stand high on their legs, with their sharp-pointed tails slightly elevated, and when flushed, rise with a whirring sound of the wings, uttering as they go a guttural kuk-kuk-kuk, and swiftly wing themselves away in a direct course. The birds have several cackling notes, and the males a peculiar crowing or low call, that in tone sounds somewhat like the call of the Turkey. In the early spring, as the love season approaches, they select a mound or slight elevation on the open prairies for a courtship ground, where they assemble at early dawn, the males dancing and running about in a circle before the females in a most ludicrous manner, facing each other with lowering head, raised feathers and defiant looks, crossing and recrossing each other's paths in a strutting, pompous way, seldom fighting, each acting as if confident of making the greatest display, and thus winning the admiration of and capturing the hen of his choice. These meetings and dances are kept up until the hens cease laying and begin to sit."

These Grouse place the nest in a tuft of grass or under a low, stunted bush. A hollow in the ground is worked out to fit the body and lined with a few blades of grass arranged in a circular form. The hens attend wholly to the hatching and rearing of the young and are attentive and watchful mothers.

The flesh of the Sharp-tail is lighter in color and more highly esteemed than that of the Prairie Hen, and the bird is therefore hunted more industriously.