The Miffed Grouse is surrounded by enemies. In addition to the common persecutor, man, the different species of hawks are on the watch for these birds, and particularly the red-tailed hawk and the Stanley hawk, according to Audubon. The former of these hawks, silently perched on the tops of trees, seizes his opportunity and dashes irresistibly down upon them ; the latter gliding rapidly through the woods pounces upon them before they are aware of their danger. Among the quadrupeds, pole-cats, weasels, racoons, opossum& and foxes, are said by the same author to be destructive foes to them.
The following is Sir John Richardson''' description of a male killed on -the 4th of May, on the Saskatchewan plains : "Back, rump, and upper tail-coverts chestnut-brown, mottled and finely undulated with blackish-brown ; the broad tips and a cordiform central mark on each feather pale-gray. Back of the neck, scapulars, and wing-coverts having the samo colours ; but the gray tips very narrow, the blackish-brown in large blotches, and instead of central marks, stripes along the shafts of orange-brown and brownish-white. Top and sides of the head, the tertiaries, and outer edges of the secondaries, mottled with the same. Eye stripe from the nostrils whitish. Shoulder-tufts velvet-black, with dark-green. Quills liver-brown, the outer webs barred near the base and mottled towards the tips with cream-yellow. Tail gray, finely undulated, and also crossed by about nine narrow bars and a broad subterminal one of blackish-brown. Throat and breast yellowish-brown, belly and vent brownish-white ; are remotely barred, but most broadly on the sides of the belly, with blackish-brown, which also forms a band across the upper part of the breast between the ruffs. Inner wing
coverts and axillarios clove-brown, barred and tipped with white. Bills and nails dark horn-colour. A male killed at the same time with the preceding, and of equal dimensions, shows more of the chestnut or orange-brown in its plumage, and the ground colour of its tail is yellowish-brown, the extreme tips and a bar next the broad subter minal dark one being gray. Females have less of the blackish-brown colour ; the shoulder-tufts are orange-brown instead of black; and the subterminal bar do the tail is chestnut-coloured. In young birds orange-brown is the prevailing tint of colour. They have a short crest on the top of the head a. fringed comb over the eye in the male. Shoulder tufts consisting of about fifteen fansilinpel feathers. Fourth quill the longest, slightly exceeding the third and fifth. Tail fan-shaped, of eighteen feathers, the central pair more than half an inch longer than the outer ones ; the individual fehthers nearly square at the end. Tarsus feathered more than halfway down anteriorly, and about half an inch lower posteriorly. All the toes strongly pectinated." The dimensions on an average may be taken as 18 inches in length, and 23 or 24 inches in extent.
Sir John Richardson states, that after a careful comparison of the specimens of Mr. Douglas's Tetrao Sabini, deposited in the Edinburgh Museum, they appeared to differ in no respect from the young of Tetrao Umbellus (Bonasia), and that the characters by which Mr. Douglas distinguishes his bird are equally applicable to the latter.
Douglas also found in the valleys of the Rocky Mountains, 54° N. lat., and a few miles northward, near the sources of Peace River, a bird which he regarded as a variety of B. Umbellus.