146 The Ruffed Grouse 



They are Hsted sixth among summer foods of chicks and seventh for 

 adults in New York (N. Y. S. Cons. Dept. Ann. Rep., 1937). As sum- 

 mer food for young birds, violets were ranked as ninth in the Adiron- 

 dacks with one and four-tenths per cent, sixth in the Catskills with 

 one and three-tenths per cent, and sixth in the remainder of New 

 York with two and one-tenth per cent; in the Adirondacks they 

 ranked eighth among fall foods (Darrow). MacGregor placed them 

 fourth am.ong late-July foods in New Hampshire, amounting to four 

 and three-tenths per cent of the total subsistence. 



Barren strawberry {Waldsteinia fragarioides) : The leaves are 

 taken during late fall and winter, from New York to Virginia. Kelso 

 listed them eleventh among winter foods in New York, averaging 

 one and four-tenths per cent of total food; in January they amounted 

 to two per cent, and in February three per cent of the food taken. 

 In Pennsylvania this foliage ranked tenth among November foods 

 one year and constituted three and eight-tenths per cent of all food 

 (Kulm, 1940), then twenty-second the next year with one and two- 

 tenths per cent ( Kuhn, 1941 ) . 



Insects : The most important groups of insects patronized for food 

 by the grouse are Hymenoptera ( ants, wasps, bees ) and Coleoptera 

 ( beetles ) . These two orders are primary contributors to the food of 

 the young birds from hatching time to mid- July, and are of sec- 

 ondary importance to the adults. Some of the larger divisions (fami- 

 lies) of these two orders, and occasionally so small a group as a 

 genus, may in certain areas provide enough prey to be classed as 

 secondary foods. Other kinds of insects and insect allies may com- 

 pose over one per cent of the food of the young birds in some areas, 

 most commonly Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies), Opiliones 

 (harvestmen), Hemiptera (bugs) and Diptera (flies). 



Animal foods constituted from forty-six and eight-tenths per cent 

 of the food of the young birds in June in the Adirondacks region of 

 New York to sixty-eight and three-tenths per cent in the Catskflls, 

 with the records from the rest of the state totaling about sixty per 

 cent. In July these percentages dropped to from ten to fifteen per 

 cent of total food for the chicks. In August the utilization of animal 

 life by the young birds approached the proportions used by adults, 

 being highest again in the Adirondacks (six and nine-tenths per 

 cent), practically the same in the Catskills, and only one and three- 

 tenths per cent over the remainder of New York ( Darrow ) . 



