If you’ve followed my blog for a while and have a photographic memory, this picture will seem a little familiar. It certainly seemed familiar to me when I took it. This view of a sooty grouse is very similar to a picture I took last year of a dusky grouse while in the Tetons. Not exactly the same of course, the head is turned at a different angle and the light and colors are different, but I certainly had the older picture in mind when I took this one.
Sooty and dusky grouse used to be considered two races of one species, blue grouse, but were recently split into separate species. Here in the Northwest, the sooty grouse tend to be in the areas from the Cascades and west to the coast, while duskies tend to be in the eastern interior.
This picture is from the Sourdough Ridge Trail in the Sunrise area of Mount Rainier National Park, the trail where I saw grouse the most often. I also saw them down by the Paradise Inn, and saw one in Olympic National Park at the end of my trip.
That last encounter in the Olympics was the most like my experience with the grouse I photographed in the Tetons, I was driving out of the park when I saw one in the road in front of me. I stopped the car and turned on my hazard lights, as the bird was moving slowly and in no hurry to get out of the way. I got out of my car and encouraged it to hurry across the road, which is fortunate as a pickup came driving past right afterwards.
That’s twice now I’ve played crossing guard for grouse.
Boolie 