Sooty Grouse

The Sooty Grouse is a big, dark grouse of Northwest conifer forests that is easy to overlook until spring, when the males start to sing. From a perch high in a conifer, often right next to the trunk, a male gives a series of about six deep hoots that can carry as far as half a mile. A displaying male raises and fans his tail, spreads his neck feathers and shows patches of bare yellow to reddish skin. Until 2006 it was lumped with the Dusky Grouse as one species, the Blue Grouse.

Females raise the young alone. The nest is a shallow scrape on the ground, and the chicks leave it within a day of hatching and find all their own food, eating mostly insects at first. In summer the birds eat leaves, flowers, buds, berries, insects and conifer needles. In winter they feed in the trees, and in the western Cascades fir and Douglas-fir needles make up about 60 percent of their diet.

In late summer and fall many Sooty Grouse move, largely on foot, from open breeding areas into dense conifer forest at higher elevations. Look for them where timber meets openings, on open forested slopes and in mountain meadows, and listen for hooting in spring. ODFW biologists count the birds each spring by driving forest roads and listening for that call.