122 BULLETIN 162, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



wings, which produce the drumming sound. Having thus ascended 15 or 20 

 feet it glides quietly on the wing to the ground and repeats the manoeuvre. 

 Favorite places are resorted to habitually, and these " drumming trees " are 

 well known to observant woodsmen. I have seen one that was so well worn 

 upon the bark as to lead to the belief that it had been used for this purpose 

 for many years. This tree was a spruce of 6 inches in diameter, with an 

 inclination of about 15 degrees from the perpendicular, and was known to 

 have been used as a " drumming tree " for several seasons. The upper surface 

 and sides of the trunk were so worn by the feet and wings of the bird or birds 

 using it for drumming, that for a distance of 12 or 15 feet the bark had 

 become quite smooth and red as if rubbed. 



Bendire (1892) quotes another description of the drumming by 

 James Lingley: 



After strutting back and forth for a few minutes, the male flew straight 

 up, as high as the surrounding trees, about 14 feet; here he remained sta- 

 tionary an instant, and while on suspended wing did the drumming with the 

 wings, resembling distant thunder, meanwhile dropping down slowly to the 

 spot from where he started, to repeat the same thing over and over again. 



Bendire also quotes this from Manly Hardy : " My father, who 

 has had opportunities to see them drum, told me they drummed in 

 the air while descending from a tree." 



Nesting. — The nest of the spruce grouse is difficult to find, as it 

 is generally placed under the low protecting branch of a spruce or 

 in deep moss and concealed in a tangle of bushes. As the mother 

 bird so perfectly matches the dead leaves and twigs of the forest 

 floor, and as she does not move except in imminent danger of being 

 stepped upon, the difficulty of discover}' is increased, and it not in- 

 frequently happens that the intruder steps in the nest and breaks 

 some of the eggs before he realizes that it is there. This method of 

 finding a nest occurred when Mr. Bent and I were cruising along 

 the Canadian Labrador coast. Mr. Bent had offered a reward to 

 anyone who would bring him a set of the eggs of this bird, as our 

 own search had hitherto been fruitless. While we were anchored 

 behind Little St. Charles Island, a fisherman came on board with 

 eight of these beautiful eggs in his hat. He explained somewhat 

 ruefully that he had stepped into the nest almost on the sitting 

 bird, and crushed four of a set of 12 eggs before he knew they were 

 there. 



The nest is generally a slight depression in the moss, lined with 

 dead grass and leaves. Lucien M. Turner describes a nest found 

 in the neighborhood of Fort Chimo, Ungava, as " merely a few 

 grass stalks and blades loosely arranged among the moss of a higher 

 spot under the drooping limbs of a spruce situated in a swamp. A 

 few feathers of the parent bird were also in the nest." 



A. D. Henderson describes a nest as follows : " It was in a muskeg, 

 a slight hollow in the moss scantily lined with a few twigs and leaves 



