190            The Wilson Bulletin-September, 1936 
"The Sharp-tailed Grouse, which in certain sections is called 
'Speckled Belly' and 'Willow' Grouse, I have found in various 
years almost everywhere west of the Mississippi River, east of 
the Sierra Nevadas, and north of the Platte River. In the old 
days it used to be very common all along the Platte and the 
Loup Rivers in Nebraska, and in the country which lies between 
these two streams. I have also found it nearly as abundant in 
the mountains, sometimes even late in the autumn, coming upon 
single birds or a considerable brood, far up toward the edge of 
timber in the most narrow wooded ravines. This species is partly 
migratory, and there is the very greatest difference in the habits 
of the bird in summer and winter. As soon as the first hard frosts 
come in the autumn the birds seem to take to the timber, and be- 
gin to feed on the buds of the willow and the quaking aspen. 
At this time they spend a large portion of their time in the trees 
and are very wild. In the Shirley Basin, in western Wyoming, 
a locality where I have never seen any of these birds in summer, 
they are abundant in winter. At this season they live in quaking 
aspen thickets along the mountains, and there I have seen hun- 
dreds of them roosting on top of a big barn which stands just at 
the edge of a grove of quaking aspen timber." 
Dery (1933, p. 4-7) found ironwood (Ostrya virginiana) and 
mountain ash to be the most important foods of the migrating northern 
sharptails in Quebec. The buds and catkins of ironwood were found 
in nineteen stomachs and varied from 8 per cent to 98 per cent, aver- 
aging 61 per cent of the total food. Mountain ash berries and buds 
varied from a trace to 71 per cent, averaging 26 per cent. Other win- 
ter foods were birch buds and catkins, aspen buds, cherry buds, alder 
catkins, willow buds, rose hips, seeds of Viburnum opulus and Cornus 
canadensis, Rubus sp., hazel buds, Aralia hispida, Cornus paniculata, 
tamarack buds and twigs, and Unifolium canadense. 
As the foods in Dery's list were determined from the northern 
sharptails which appeared in Quebec in 1932, it is possible that they 
may be different from those eaten by this subspecies on regular win- 
ter range. 
Bent (1932, p. 286) lists the buds and sprouts of Betula glandu- 
losa, willow, aspen, and larch, and the buds of juniper as food of the 
northern sharptail. Presumably he means winter food. 
Bendire (p. 104) thinks that in Manitoba rose hips are eaten as 
grit. He quotes Ernest E. Thompson (Ernest Thompson Seton) as fol- 
lows: "To illustrate the importance of this shrub (prairie rose) . .
. I 
append a table of . . . the contents of crops and gizzards of Grouse 
killed during various months: