Biography 53 



Few people have the opportunity of observing an unflushed grouse 

 taking flight at its leisure. When it takes the time to do so it can fly 

 as silently as an owl. 



Duration of flight varies but never very greatly. Assuming that 

 it may make its own choice of satisfactory cover to alight in, the av- 

 erage flight from flushing is between three hundred and six hun- 

 dred feet. Flights made for its own purposes usually are shorter. 

 If the same bird is flushed about three or four times in quick succes- 

 sion it can be picked up by hand, exhausted. About half a mile is the 

 limit of power flight (not counting long coasting) without recupera- 

 tion of the muscles. 



Speed of flight varies with the cover. In woodland with an average 

 number of trees to dodge, it will be from thirty to forty-five miles 

 per hour according to the strength of the bird, its anxiety to escape, 

 and the amount of dodging required. In the open it can fly con- 

 siderably faster. I timed one bird across an open field, using a stop 

 watch, at fifty-one miles per hour, measured from the time it left 

 the ground on one side of the field to the time it entered the woods 



o 



on the other. 



Relation of Nest Location to Drumming Logs. The positional re- 

 lation of a female nesting site to the nearest active drumming log 

 is normally negative. If the female has a definite thought in select- 

 ing her nest site with regard to the location of the male it is to get 

 the nest as far away from him as practical. I have observed one 

 drumming log fifteen feet from a nest but I was unable to check 

 whether or not the log was used after the nest was made. Allen 

 ( 1934 ) says that the distance between log and nest is sometimes as 

 low as fifty feet and sometimes as far as half to three-quarters of a 

 mile. The closest I have observed both nest and log in use at once 

 was seventy-five feet. In this case these two birds habitually roosted 

 in a hemlock tree over the dmmming log prior to the incubation 

 period. This is not usual, however. 



In numerous cases nests have been observed half a mile from 

 the nearest known drumming log in areas where we believed we 

 knew the location of all active logs. The average distance is approxi- 

 mately one-quarter mile. 



Nest Desertion and Renesting. Desertion of the nest is rare in the 

 ruffed grouse. The few cases observed that appeared to be deser- 



