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[[underlined]] [[Pediocitis]] [[/underlined]],
On Hawksnest Butte an old sharptailed grouse with a family of  young sputtered out from the side of the wagon. As I followed she limped & fluttered along infront of me but when the dog saw her & came running she flew up about 4 feet from the ground & kept about 6 feet ahead of him till he was over the next ridge. That is her best card, leading coyotes & foxes away by the end of the nose till her young are safe & it seems to be perfectly learned.
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Hawksnest Butte is a great glacial pile probably 300 feet above the prairie, evidently a relic of earlier glacial sheets which the last one plowed around & only accentuated. Its N. & E. faces are full of deep gulches with springs & brush & timber, but mainly the butte is an uplifted mass of the prairie with all the prairie characteristics of sloughs, ridges, boulders, grass & prairie plants. On the high points are at least 7 old Indian mounds, usually 40 or 50 feet across & 4 or 5 feet high, old & flattened & several have been dug into.

The timber of the gulches is mainly bur oak, box elder & green ash, but with a dense scrubby growth of chokeberry, wild rose, current, gooseberry, red raspberry & strawberry. Catbirds, wrens, flycatchers & yellow warblers are conspicuous, but only Peromyscus were caught in our traps & a cottontail was shot. Sharptailed grouse are common & a pair of Buteo swainsoni seem to have a nest here.