[4] The adventurous travellers to the Source of the Missouri.

"The flight of these birds is slow, unsteady, and affords but little
amusement to the sportsman. From the disproportionately small, convex,
thin-quilled, wing,--so thin, that a vacant space, half as broad as a
quill appears between each,--the flight may be said to be a sort of
fluttering more than any thing else: the bird giving two or three claps
of the wings in quick succession, at the same time hurriedly rising;
then shooting or floating, swinging from side to side, gradually
falling, and thus producing a clapping, whirring sound. When started,
the voice is '_cuck, cuck, cuck_,' like the common pheasant. They pair
in March and April. The love-song is a confined, grating, but not
offensively disagreeable, tone,--something that we can imitate, but have
a difficulty in expressing--'_Hurr-hurr--hurr-r-r-r hoo_,' ending in a
deep hollow tone, not unlike the sound produced by blowing into a large
reed. Nest on the ground, under the shade of _Purshia_ and _Artemisia_,
or near streams, among _Phalaris arundinacea_, carefully constructed of
dry grass, and slender twigs. Eggs from thirteen to seventeen, about the
size of those of a common fowl, of a wood-brown colour, with irregular
chocolate blotches on the thick end. The young leave the nest a few
hours after they are hatched. In the summer and autumn months these
birds are seen in small troops, and in winter and spring in flocks of
several hundreds. Plentiful through the barren arid plains of the river
Colombia; also in the interior of North California. They do not exist on
the banks of the river Missouri; nor have they been seen in any place
east of the Rocky Mountains."

The general colour of the upper plumage is light hair-brown, mottled and
variegated with dark umber-brown and yellowish-white. The under plumage