(2) Bonasa u. togata 1889. Maine. T. Umbagog. a noise closely resembling the snicker of the red squirrel. This indicates that it has at length become alarmed. It may then fly, but usually it starts off at a slow walk, continuing the snickering noise, shaking its head violently at each step and erecting its crest. Unless followed, it seems to recover from its alarm after going a few yards and then pauses and stands ereet again. If it flies it merely flutters up into the near- est bush or to the branch of a spruce or hemlock twenty or thirty feet above the ground. Sometimes it will drop back to the ground again after merely rising over a windfall or belt of bushes. In a tree the Grouse is very hard to discern unless its flight has been previously marked to the spot. It stands rather erect, its feathers drawn in closely to its body, its neck stretched up to the full length, its crest raised. Un- til satisfied that it has been discovered and when about to fly it remains absolutely motionless. Its colors harmonize so well with the surrounding bark and branches and its long, slender form is so unlike that of the plump bird which one expects to see that an untrained eye may easily pass over it without discovering it. On the ground, on dry leaves, or when sitting as it frequently does on an old log, it is even harder to make out; and were it not for its fatal habit of uttering the snickering noise and walking stupidly along in front of the hunter when closely pressed, it would be pretty sure to escape detection from all except the most experienced hun- ters. As it is, fully three fourths of the birds seen can be easily bagged by the merest Tyro, and old hands average nine out of ten, all shot sitting. On two occasions this autumn, I killed every bird in a flock of six without moving more than a few feet picking up the first bird until the last one was down. Sometimes, however, a bird of which one feels perfectly sure escapes by running after flying a few yards and dropping just out of sight behind some windfall of thicket of bushes, for when a Grouse makes up its mind to run, it goes with so much speed that it is out of the question to try to overtake it. A bird that has been thoroughly alarmed often runs a quarter of a mile or more before stopping. It is seldom that a Maine Grouse takes a long swift flight like that of our Mas- sachusetts bird, but I have occasionally seen an individual fly quite as strongly and as far. There was a perceptible 26