172 BULLETIN 16 2, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Tower Falls. The female sat as if roosting on a horizontal pine 

 branch, 4 feet from the ground, in a clump of thick-growing sap- 

 lings; a male, with ruffs spread and tail spread in an upright fan, 

 strutted about below. He may have been drumming, although I 

 did not actually hear him." 



J. H. Riley (1912) heard it drumming in the fall in Alberta; he 

 says : k - When we first made camp, September 5th, and for about a 

 week thereafter, we seldom heard this bird drum, but before we 

 departed, September 22nd, one used to drum at intervals throughout 

 the day, though the weather was cloudy with rain and later snow." 



Thomas T. McCabe writes to me that at Indian Point Lake, near 

 Barkerville, British Columbia, he heard one drumming for man}' 

 weeks, not on the usual log, but on the large sloping root of a big 

 spruce on the lake shore, 175 yards away from a nest he had found ; 

 he watched him drum at the same spot 10 days after the nest had 

 been robbed. 



Nesting. — Mr. McCabe very kindly collected and sent to me this 

 nest and the 10 very handsome eggs it contained. He took it on 

 May 27, 1929, at Barkerville, British Columbia, and he writes to 

 me that 



the nest was in heavy, open, mixed, second-growth spruce and balsam {Abies 

 lasiocarjja) , which had nearly the dignity of primeval forest, and was car- 

 peted with our universal green moss. It was wedged between two roots of a 

 9-inch balsam, and sunken to the extent that the top was about level with the 

 moss. There was absolutely no bushy or herbaceous concealment. The brood- 

 ing bird left in each case when we were from 15 to 20 feet away, but it did 

 not approach us. It kept at a distance of about 40 feet, running, crouched low, 

 whining like an eager hound, and then flew away. The leaves lining the nest 

 are Populus tirenwiloides, seldom far to seek here, even in the deep timber. 



Major Bendire (1892) mentions a nest found in Montana, "under 

 the trunk of a fallen cottonwood tree, which rested about a foot 

 from the ground. Otherwise the nest was not concealed in any 

 way." Another nest near Nulato, Alaska, was " found in an old 

 willow stump." In Yellowstone National Park, Mr. Skinner records 

 two nests in his notes; one was in a grove of quaking aspens, under 

 a fallen tree ; the other was at the foot of a lodgepole pine, a hollow 

 in the pine needles. 



Eggs. — The eggs of the gray ruffed grouse are practically in- 

 distinguishable from those of its eastern relatives. The measure- 

 ments of 55 eggs average 40.3 by 29.8 millimeters; the eggs show- 

 ing the four extremes measure 43 by 31.5, 38 by 30. and 40.7 by 28.7 

 millimeters. 



Young. — Swarth(1922) found two broods of young in the Stikine 

 River region, of which he writes : 



The young of one brood were still unable to fly. Our first knowledge 

 of their presence was derived from the mother bird, who burst forth from 



