SUMMARY 



249 



"Scare up partridges feeding about the green springy places under the edge of 

 hills. See them skim or scale away for forty rods along and upward to the woods 

 . . . hear [their] distant drumming ... as if the earth's pulse now beats audi- 

 bly . . . meet a partridge with her brood in the woods . . . they still are sure 

 to thrive like true natives of the soil, whatever revolutions occur." 



Henry D. Thoreau 



So wrote the naturalist-philosopher nearly a century ago. Yet, it is still such incidents of 

 grouse life, together with the startling roar of the intrepid warrior as he bursts upward 

 through Autumn's flaming foliage, which attract most of us. We can still recall vividly being 

 scared half out of our wits when, as a bare-footed youngster getting the cows or following a 

 trout stream, a "partridge"' burst like a thunderbolt from beneath our feet. And, in the 

 twilight, the roll of the "muffled drum" seems to symbolize Nature's immutable mystery. 



The primary purpose of this Investigation, however, has been to study those factors of 

 grouse ecology which control its abundance in New York State. Therefore, no special atten- 

 tion has been given to the general habits of the species except as they have had a definite bear- 

 ing on productivity. Nevertheless, a great deal of life history data have been accumulated 

 incidental to carrying on specific studies. These observations are discussed in this chapter. 

 Also, under certain headings, such as drumming, attention has been given to assembling the 

 story of past thought on the subject since the writings of the early explorers. 



For the sake of easy reading, then, the stories, old and new. and the facts, insofar as we 

 have been able to decipher them, have been organized under separate descriptive headings. 

 Since certain habits are not common to both sexes or to both adults and chicks, these discus- 

 sions have been further grouped in four parts comprising those characteristic of both sexes, of 

 the male, of the female, and of the brood respectively. Since, however, the various topics are 

 more or less dissociated, it has appealed to the authors as desirable at the beginning to sum- 

 marize the principal activities of a typical group of grouse as they are indulged in season by 

 season. 



