An easily overlooked bird

Wed., Sept. 23, 2015

Mottled brown and easily overlooked in their native setting, the sage grouse is not much to look at until spring breeding season, when males puff their chests and flare their feathers in courtship displays.

The greater sage grouse flies, but not well, sometimes killing themselves by flying into barbed-wire fences.

In spring, they eat insects and small flowering plants, switching to sagebrush in fall. Mostly they keep hunkered down and out of sight amid the pungent-smelling, olive-green shrubs for which they’re named.

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