A WINTER RESIDENT. 195 



in winter nights under the blanket of smoke which overhangs, 

 and abounding in dainties of all kinds, my thoughts turn to 

 the ruffed grouse in a bare tree-top, picking his supper of 

 frozen twigs before he goes to his bed in the cold snow; 

 houseless, unsheltered, knowing no change of diet the long 

 winter through, yet always plump and contented. Brave bird ! 

 he loves the cold and his plain, bitter food. 



To us, poplar is unpalatable, but it is the ruffed grouse's 

 staff of life. Not only does he eat poplar buds and twigs all 

 winter, varying them only by the addition of yellow- and white- 

 birch buds, and occasionally by the buds of apple, hornbeam, or 

 willow; but he resorts to poplar long before the snows have 

 driven him into the tree-tops. He not only '^buds" as the 

 hunters say, during the fall, but sometimes, even in August, 

 when his bill of fare is almost unlimited, he eats heartily of the 

 hard, sapless leaves of the poplar. And late in spring, too, he 

 continues to live by the poplar, eating the catkins even when 

 they are three inches long, and look like great woolly cater- 

 pillars. But in spring he also eats the willow buds and the 

 pretty "pussies,'*' or willow catkins. As the willow contains a 

 purple dye, a grouse that has been feeding long on them will 

 have its stomach and intestines dyed bright purple. 



As the snow melts, the grouse goes down upon the ground and 

 picks the young leaves just coming up and the older ones that 

 have remained green under the snow — checkerberry leaves and 

 berries, goldthread leaves, clover and strawberry leaves, and, 

 later, the strawberries, together with raspberries and black- 

 berries in summer, rose-hips when they ripen, sweet elder- 

 berries, thorn plums in the fall, black alder berries to some 

 extent, and rarely a little rock fern or tree-growing fungus. 

 Beechnuts are a favorite food, as they are for deer, bear, porcu- 

 pines, and other wood's creatures. The ruffed grouse will eat as 



