376 GAME BIRDS, WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



Field Marks. — Very dark, smaller than the Ruffed Grouse; tail shorter, 

 much rounded. No other Grouse has the large, conspicuous white spots 

 on breast, flank and lower tail coverts. 



Nest. — On ground. 



Eggs. — Six to sixteen, 1.71 by 1.22, buffy or pale brownish, more or less 

 speckled or spotted with deep brown (Ridgway). Col. John E. Thayer, 

 who has taken the nest of this bird in Maine, found but six eggs, and 

 says that the guides tell him that they rarely see more than six or seven 

 young in a brood. 



Range. — Manitoba, southern Ontario and New Brunswick south to north- 

 ern parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York and New 

 England. 



History. 



The Canada Spruce Partridge is a small wood Grouse of 

 the northern evergreen forests. In early days it may have 

 been not uncommon among the spruce and hemlock forests 

 and in the tamarack swamps, which were then found in the 

 Berkshire Hills and in northern Worcester County, Massa- 

 chusetts. I cannot find any definite reference to it, however, 

 in the chronicles of the early Massachusetts writers. There 

 are but two records of its occurrence in the State, one at 

 Roxbury, in the 60's,^ and another recorded by Prof. F. W. 

 Putnam, who states that it was found in the hemlock woods of 

 Gloucester September, 1851.^ It was once common, however, 

 in the spruce and tamarack woods of northern New England 

 and New York, from most of which it has disappeared, and 

 it is now found in large numbers only in the fastnesses of the 

 coniferous forests of Canada. I can remember when it was 

 common in some of the Maine woods, and when it was seen 

 not uncommonly in Massachusetts markets. Knight (1908) 

 states that it still occurs as a rare resident in the more wooded 

 and less inhabited parts of Maine. Eaton (1910) says that 

 it was formerly common in the Adirondack woods, but is now 

 threatened with extermination in New York. ]\Iuch more 

 evidence of its destruction and decrease might be given. In 

 destroying this bird we have not even the excuse that it is a 

 table delicacy, for its flesh is strongly impregnated with the 

 taste of spruce buds; nor the other stock excuse that it was 



1 Allen, J. A.: Amer. Nat., February, 1870, Vol. III., No. 12, p. 636. 



2 Putnam, F. W.: Proc. Essex. Inst., 1856, Vol. I, p. 224. 



