Game Birds and Game Fishes of the Pacific Coast Part 5

Female--Considerably more of an ochreous cast. It has the same characteristic broad white tips on the feathers of the flanks; tail, dirty ochre, mottled with black and narrowly tipped with white.

=Nest and Eggs=--The nest is a depression in the ground in some secluded place and lined with leaves or gra.s.s. The eggs, averaging about a dozen, are of a reddish buff mottled with brown.

=Measurements=--Total length about 15 inches; wing about 7 inches.

Weight from one and a half to two pounds.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SAGE c.o.c.k (Centrocercus europhasia.n.u.s)]

THE SAGE HEN

(Centrocercus urophasia.n.u.s)

The sage grouse, or sage hen is the largest of the grouse of America, some of the males weighing as much as seven pounds. Its range, so far as the geographical scope of this work is concerned, is northeastern California, Nevada, and eastern Oregon and Washington, but it extends much farther east. It is only found in the sage brush districts of the high alt.i.tudes. They usually remain in single broods, though they are sometimes found in much larger flocks. They often travel for considerable distances, "following the leader" in single file. They strut in the nesting season, but in a peculiar way, pushing their b.r.e.a.s.t.s on the ground until the feathers are worn off and even the skin abraded.

A peculiarity of the sage grouse is that it has no gizzard, but instead it has a stomach more like that of an animal. The young birds lie quite well to a dog and furnish very good sport, and until they are about half grown the flesh is quite good, but the older birds are very unsavory and in fact almost unpalatable. This is caused by their feeding almost entirely upon the leaves of the sage.

=Color=--Male--Upper parts, gray, barred with brown; tail, very long, the longer feathers being quite narrow and stiff and barred also with brown; a dark line over the eye and a light one from the eye down the side of the neck; throat and cheeks, nearly white, mottled with black; a few long hairy like feathers grow from the side of the neck of the male birds.

Female--The female is colored and marked like the male but considerably darker, is much smaller, with shorter tail and without the hairy feathers on the side of the neck.

=Nest and Eggs=--The nest is nothing more than a hollow in the midst of some bunch of brush, possibly lined with a few leaves. The eggs are from twelve to eighteen in number and of a greenish shade, mottled with bright brown, but these spots are easily rubbed off.

=Measurements=--Male--Total length from 24 to 28 inches; wing, 12 to 14. Weight, from four to seven pounds.

Female--Total length, from 20 to 22 inches; wing, 10 to 12. Weight, from three to five pounds.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHARP-TAIL GROUSE (Pediocaetes phasianellus columbia.n.u.s)]

COLUMBIAN SHARP-TAILED GROUSE

(Pediocaetes phasianellus columbia.n.u.s)

The Columbian sharp-tailed grouse is the "prairie chicken" of eastern Washington. It is far different from the pinated grouse (=Tympanuchus=) of the middle states, commonly called prairie chicken.

Its habitat is much the same, however, being the open plains and untimbered foothills east of the Cascade mountains in Washington and through eastern Oregon into northern Nevada, and the extreme northeastern corner of California. The sharp-tail grouse has the same habit of strutting in large groups like the prairie chicken at the beginning of the nesting season. They do not drum, however, like the eastern bird, but make a noise more like an attempt to crow. They also take refuge in the timber for protection from the storms of winter.

During the hunting season they lie well to a dog and afford fine shooting. The food of the sharp-tailed grouse consists of about ten per cent insects, the balance being made up of seeds, grains and berries, with a good percentage of "brouse" in the winter.

=Color=--Male--Side of head and throat, pale buff with mottlings of brown on the cheeks; back and wings, gray, mottled with black; breast, light buff. Under parts, white with lines of dark brown; central tail feathers long and pointed; no long feathers on the neck.

Female--Resembles the male with the exception that the tail feathers are not so long.

=Nest and Eggs=--The nest is a rude affair on the ground, lined with a little dead gra.s.s and generally contains from ten to fifteen eggs of a greenish buff speckled with fine dots of brown.

=Measurements=--Total length from 14 to 16 inches, with the wing about eight; the central tail feathers are about five inches in length. The average bird will weigh about two pounds.

Order ANSERES

Family, ANATIDAE

Range. (All Genus Species Common Names breed far north.) ------------ ------------------ ------------------- -------------------

Subfamily, ANSERENAE

{hyperborea {White goose {From Southern Chen { {(large) {California north.

{ {rossi {Ross' goose {From Mexico {Small white goose {north.

Anser albifrons gambeli {White-fronted {From Mexico {goose {north.

{Gray goose {

{Fulvous tree duck {From Central Dendrocygna fulva {Mexican tree duck {California south {Cavalier {through Mexico.

{Breeds from Central {California to {Central Mexico.

{canadensis {Canada goose {From central { {Honker {Mexico north.

{ {canadensis Hutchins' goose From Southern {hutchinsii California north.

{ {canadensis White-cheeked {Inland plains from Branta {occidentalis goose {Central California { {north.

{ {canadensis {Black brant {From Southern {minima {Cackling goose {California north.

{ {nigricans Black sea brant {On certain bays {from Magdalena, {Lower California {north.

Philacte canagica Emperor goose {A rare visitor {south of Humboldt {Bay, California

Subfamily, CYGNINAE

{columbia.n.u.s Whistling swan {From Oregon north.

Olor { {Rarely as far { {south as Central { {California.

{ {buccinator Trumpeter swan From Southern { California north.

THE WATERFOWL

The great variety of the waterfowl of the Pacific Coast, the wonderful numbers in which they are found and the excellent shooting they afford, forms a subject, which, to do it justice, would require the s.p.a.ce of an ordinary volume.

With the exception of the Gulf tier of the Southern states, waterfowl on the Atlantic Coast are but birds of pa.s.sage, tarrying for a time on their way to milder winter quarters; tourists loitering for a day or two at attractive by-stations as they wing their way south in the fall and again on their return north in the spring. They are leaving the isolation of the far north or the mountain lakes and marshes where they spent the summer rearing their young and they are seeking more favorable feeding grounds in the milder climate of the South, where animal and vegetable life is not in the state of hibernation which prevents it from furnishing them with an abundance of food during their southern sojourn.

Over the larger portion of our hunting grounds what is the beginning of the calendar year is in fact the beginning of our spring. When the frost king lays his hand upon all vegetable and insect life in the East, spreading his white shroud over field and pasture and breaking with his icy sleet from the vine and the brush their clinging leaves; when from the trees have fallen the last vestige of their autumnal crowns of gold and crimson; when the last flower has shed its petals; when the last hum of insect is heard and the last song of bird has died away on the southern horizon--'tis then the early rains of the Coast start the new sown grain in the fields, give life again to the gra.s.ses of the plains, carpet the foothills and the valleys with the gold and purple and crimson of innumerable flowers, and our veritable spring commences.

With us, therefore, waterfowl are not pa.s.sing pilgrims, tarrying for a few days only as they rest and feed on their way to the open waters and green pastures in which they intend to pa.s.s those months marked winter on the calendar of the year. They are not mere hurrying flocks alighting now and again as they wing their way back to their breeding grounds in the spring But ours is the Mecca to which they journey; ours the feeding grounds on which they a.s.semble from the lakes and marshes of the Arctic; from the whole chain of the Aleutian Islands; from the inland seas of British Columbia and from the mountain lakes of our own Sierras from Washington to Mexico. Here on the bays, estuaries and marshes of the coast and the lakes and ponds of the valleys, throughout the whole length of these hunting grounds, countless millions of these birds have found their winter feeding grounds for unnumbered ages. No cold, no ice, no snow, no howling blizzards to stop them in their search for food or disturb their midday rest upon our quiet waters. In warmth they feed upon the tender shoots of the young gra.s.ses that fringe their watery haunts or bask in sunshine on the sandy sh.o.r.es.

It is the popular impression that all ducks breed in the far north and migrate from there south. One has only to shoot on the lakes of Mexico to learn how erroneous this impression is, for one will meet varieties quite common there that rarely if ever reach the southern boundaries of the United States.