CANADA RUFFED GROUSE 169 



Ora W. Knight (1908) says: 



In the winter they " burl " seeming to prefer the yellow and white hirches, 

 and the poplar, but also eating spruce, fir, pine, maple and in fact many other 

 buds. 



Brewster (1925) writes: 



To the best of my knowledge the Birch Partridges of the Umbagog Region 

 never eat the spills of coniferous trees, although subsisting almost wholly on 

 the buds of deciduous ones during rather more than half of the year. In late 

 spring and early summer their food is gleaned mostly from the surface of 

 forest-shaded ground and consists largely of insects and low-growing herba- 

 ceous foliage of various kinds. Even where it is most plentiful the birds seldom 

 linger anywhere to seek it, but continue to advance, picking up a leaf or grub 

 now here, next there, so daintily and infrequently that they often ramble on 

 slowly for a quarter of a mile or more before filling their crops. They are 

 somewhat less dainty and fastidious when feasting in late August on the fruit 

 of low blueberry bushes, while in September I have often seen them alight 

 at sunset in cornel or Viburnum (especially V. opulus) bushes on river-banks 

 and literally gorge themselves in the course of a few minutes, almost without 

 change of foothold, on the berries which these shrubs commonly bear in such 

 profuse and crowded clusters. Later in the season the pale orange fruit of the 

 mountain ash is similarly dealt with whenever it can be had plentifully, which 

 is not oftener than every other year. The glowing red berries of the black 

 alder are also eaten freely in late autumn. The birds seem to have little 

 or no liking for oats, but are exceedingly fond of buckwheat, and to obtain 

 it will venture out fifty yards or more from neighboring coverts into stubble 

 fields where it has recently been grown and harvested. 



Behavior. — Illustrating the tameness of ruffed grouse under prim- 

 itive conditions, Brewster (1925) relates his experience with them 

 in the Umbagog region early in the seventies, as follows: 



At first I undertook to hunt them with a setter, and to shoot them only on 

 wing, as had been my practice in coverts nearer home. My good dog found and 

 pointed them readily, but was evidently not a little puzzled to comprehend 

 why they should stand conspicuously upright in open ground, or on mossy 

 logs, regarding him with seeming indifference from a distance of only a few 

 yards, instead of rising far in advance, or crouching unseen in dense brush, 

 as had been the unvarying habit of all birds of their kind with which he had 

 had previous experience. When I stepped in ahead of the staunch setter with 

 the intention of flushing the Grouse, their behavior was still more surprising 

 especially if, as often happened, there were as many as five or six together. 

 For instead of rising promptly on wing as I wished, and expected them to 

 do, they would begin a snickering outcry almost precisely like that of a Red 

 Squirrel, nod their heads slightly a few times, and then start off at a slow walk 

 with crests erect and perhaps also widespread tails, shaking their heads and 

 necks, and twitching their expanded ruffs at each deliberate step, and con- 

 tinuing unceasingly to utter their derisive and unseemly snickering. This 

 was most likely to happen in a narrow cart-path tunneled through the forest, 

 or on the outskirts of some woodland opening. In either case the birds had 

 seldom far to go before reaching fallen tree-tops, or dense evergreen thickets, 

 from which it was difficult if not impossible to dislodge them, at least by the 

 aid of a dog, who would never flush his birds. Into such sanctuaries they com- 



