CANADA SPRUCE GROUSE 131 



Near the base of the Alaska Peninsula, Doctor Osgood (1904) 

 found these grouse in abundance about Lake Clark, " more common 

 there than " he had " ever found them elsewhere in Alaska." He says : 



They feed largely cm berries in the summer time, being particularly fond of 

 those of Vaccinium vitis-idaea, which they eat almost exclusively from the time 

 the little green berry first begins to swell until it is dead ripe. At this time the 

 flesh of the birds is sweeter than in the early winter, when a diet of spruce 

 needles has made them fatter but less palatable. In the spruce forest, which is 

 their ordinary habitat, they are unable to obtain on the moss-covered ground 

 the grit necessary for a gallinaceous bird, so they make daily excursions to the 

 shores of the rivers and lakes where fine gravel is to be had in abundance. 

 Early morning before sunrise is the time for this ; then they may often be seen 

 on the beaches, singly, in pairs, or in small flocks. Doubtless they also come to 

 the rivers to drink, though pools are common enough in the swampy openings 

 in the timber. On the Chulitna River one was caught in a steel trap which had 

 been set for a possible mink or weasel in the marsh grass at the water's edge. 



CANACHITES CANADENSIS CANACE (Linnaeus) 

 CANADA SPRUCE GROUSE 



HABITS 



This is the form of the spruce grouse found in extreme southern 

 Canada and the extreme Northern States, east of the Eocky Moun- 

 tains. The male is practically indistinguishable from the male of 

 the Hudsonian spruce grouse, but the female is decidedly more 

 rufous or rusty, both above and below. The haunts and habits of 

 the two are practically identical. 



Edward H. Forbush (1927) has given us the following attractive 

 description of its haunts : 



In the dense spruce, fir, cedar and tamarack swamps of the great Maine 

 woods the Spruce Grouse dwells. Where giant, moss grown logs and stumps of 

 the virgin forest of long ago cumber the ground, where tall, blasted stubs of 

 others still project far above the tree-tops of to-day, where the thick carpet of 

 green sphagnum moss deadens every footfall, where tiny-leaved vinelets radiate 

 over their mossy beds, there we may find this wild bird as tame as a barn-yard 

 fowl. In the uplands round about, there still remain some tall primeval woods 

 of birch and beech and rock maple where the moose and bear have set their 

 marks upon the trees. In winter the deer gather in the swamps, and there their 

 many trails wind hither and yon. Gnarled, stunted trees of arbor vitae, some 

 dead or dying, defy the blasts of winter, while the long, bearded Usnea droops 

 streaming from their branches. 



An equally satisfactory account comes from the facile pen of 

 William Brewster (1925) : 



For the most part the birds frequent dense, matted growths of cedar (i. e. 

 arbor vitae), black spruce, and hackmatack (American larch), overspreading, 

 low-lying, flat, and more or less swampy lands bordering on sluggish streams 

 or on semiopen bogs similar to those known as Muskegs in the far North. From 

 such coverts they wander not infrequently up neighboring hillsides to evergreen 



