226 BIRDS IX THEIR RELATIONS TO MAN. 



Beechnuts, chestnuts, and acorns of the chestnut and white 

 oaks are also common articles of food. Among berries early 

 in the season the blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, and 

 elder-berries are eaten with relish, while later in the year 

 wintergreen, partridge-berry, with their foliage, sumach-berries 

 (including those of the poisonous species), cranberries, black 

 alder, dogwood, nanny-berries, and wild grapes form their 

 chief diet. In the fall the foliage of plants often forms a 

 large part of their food, that of clover, strawberry, buttercup, 

 wintergreen, and partridge-berry predominating. In the win- 

 ter these birds feed on the buds of trees, preferring those of 

 the apple-tree, ironwood, black and white birch, and poplar." 



In isolated cases ruffed grouse cause some damage to fruit- 

 trees by eating the buds in winter. The extent of the injury 

 w^hich a grouse is capable of doing in a season may be esti- 

 mated from the contents of a crop examined by us. It was 

 taken from a female shot in January, and contained three 

 hundred and forty-seven apple-tree buds, eighty-eight maple 

 buds, and twelve leaves of sheep-laurel. This was, of course, 

 a single meal, and, as two such meals are eaten per day, it 

 must be reckoned as half the daily consumption. 



One of the crops of four birds killed during the latter part 

 of September and subjected to the same scrutiny showed 

 barberries five per cent., sumac seeds twenty per cent., and 

 apple pulp twenty per cent. Another contained ten per cent, 

 of mushrooms and ninety per cent, of red-humped oak-cater- 

 pillars (Edema alblfrons). The other two were sliot from the 

 same flock at the same time. Their crops were packed with 

 the oak caterpillars above mentioned and white-oak acorns, 

 the ratios being sixty per cent, and seventy-seven per cent, 

 of caterpillars against forty per cent, and twenty-three per 

 cent, of acorns respectively. 



The Prairie-Hen is of more importance than any other 

 member of the grouse family. It is abundant in the prairie 

 region drained by the Mississippi, and furnishes regular occu- 



