48 THE SPECIES— ITS TAXONOMY, RANGE, BIOLOGY, & ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE 



Briefly, their comparative characters* may be set forth as follows: 



li. u. umbellus — a red brown bird; the dark markings on the lower surface much reduced 

 so that the breast appears very light, under tail coverts whiter. 



B. u. togala — a gray brown bird: markings on lower surface abundant, dark, and broad, 

 the cross bars being predominant in the coloration of this area; under tail coverts with more 

 brown. 



B. II. ihayeri — similar to togala but general color of upper parts darker, more dusky or 

 sooty, less grayish: the whole undcrparts I except throat I hea\ily and regularly banded with 

 dusky, the dark bands blacker and much more boldly contrasted against the ground color — 

 less blended. 



B. u. umbelloides — similar to togata but paler; the breast and underparts usually more 

 rufous or huffy; the barring a lighter brown. 



B. u. Yukonensis — a decidedly gray bird, heavily and uniformly barred below witli dusky 

 gray; paler and ashier than umbelloides. 



B. u. sabini — a deep rufous bird. 



Throughout all these races, dichromatism — the occurrence in the same brood of individuals 

 of both color phases, gray and rufous — is well marked"^. In general, however, the preponder- 

 ance of the birds in northern areas or at high ahitudes tend to be grayish, and vice versa. 



Beyond this, UttaT™ has reported a tendency for the degree of tarsal feathering as well as 

 the length of the "snowshoes" to be greater among the more northern subspecies. 



More recently, additional subspecies have been proposed*. Working with the birds of the 

 l^acific coast, Conover'^ described certain differences in the grouse of Vancouver Island and 

 named B. u. brunnesceris as distinct from the mainland form B. u. sabini. In the East, Bailey*' 

 described a race from Long Island (N. Y.), calling it B. u. Itelmei. Finally, Todd in 1940'°' 

 and Aldrich and Friedman in 1943'" have presented extensive revisions of the subspecies of 

 this grouse. These are mentioned here for completeness but it is outside the province of this 

 report to discuss their respective taxonomic merits. 



RANGE* 



Occurring through thirty-four degrees of latitude and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the 

 ruffed grouse is found over a greater area than any other non-migratory North American 

 game bird. The accompanying map (figure 1 ) illustrates this range graphically for both 

 present and primitive conditions. 



Primarily a bird of the Transition and Boreal forests, it extends from coast to coast across 

 southern Canada, stretches northwestward into the Mackenzie basin and through the "Liard 

 Gap" into the Yukon valley of Alaska, and reaches twin arms southward in the Appalachians 

 and Rockies. 



Arid and treeless, the Great Plains rppreseiit coiiditions which exclude it from a large 

 area lying cast of the Rockies and extending northward into suulherii Alberta and Saskatch- 

 ewan. Siniilail\. il i> ni>l found in the arid Harney Basin of central Oregon, the interior of 

 Washington, or the Snake River Plains of southern Idaho. 



* Taken largely (r<im Wrtmorc'*'-'' and TodJ^'* except for thayeri, for which Dangs^ is the source. 



A See (lisruHsion iinjer PntychromaliHm, p. 57. 



t An inlrrettting incident occurred in 1871 when a student at CitrneU University suggested a new species (B. Jobsii)^"^ on the 



basis of a single specimen which was a little heavier than average and had twenty tail-feathers. 

 t By Rohert W. Oarrow. 



