RUFFED GROUSE 153 



laneous vegetable matter, 0.86 percent. The insect food proper includes grass- 

 hoppers, 0.78 percent ; caterpillars, 1.15 percent ; beetles, 4.57 percent, and mis- 

 cellaneous insects, 3.86 percent. Some miscellaneous animal matter, made up 

 of spiders and snails, is also eaten. The ruffed grouse eats a somewhat smaller 

 proportion of insects than the bobwhite, but, like it, feeds on them to a large 

 extent in the breeding season. 



Judd lists among the animal food mainly insects, various grass- 

 hoppers, crickets, various caterpillars, cutworms, army worms, cot- 

 ton worms, apple worms, various beetles and their larvae, clover 

 weevil, potato beetle, various flies, bugs, ants, spiders, oak galls 

 made by insects, snails, and slugs. 



The foregoing lists are probably not complete, for the grouse will 

 eat, at different seasons, a great variety of food. In spring they are 

 fond of the catkins, blossoms, and tender leaves of many of the 

 plants named above, the fresh blades of new grass, and the wild 

 strawberries, when they come. Forbush (1927) adds: 



Perhaps the plant most sought after in the New England coastal region is 

 the cow-wheat, a low growing plant with small white blossoms which thrives 

 almost everywhere that this bird is found. Ruffed Grouse in confinement are 

 so fond of it that they eagerly eat quantities of it, consuming the entire 

 plant, root and branch. Edible mushrooms are taken eagerly. Fern leaves 

 which remain green in swamps under the snow of winter are eaten then as 

 well as at other seasons. 



During summer, when the birds find their food on or near the 

 ground, insects begin to form an important part of their food, about 

 30 per cent of the adult food, according to Doctor Judd (1905a) . He 

 says that the newly hatched chicks are nearly, or wholly, insectivo- 

 rous, feeding on cutworms, grasshoppers, beetles, ants, wasps, spiders, 

 and caterpillars. The old birds, too, like to wander out into the 

 fields and meadows near the woods in search of grasshoppers and 

 crickets and to scratch among the woodland leaves for other insects 

 and grubs. All kinds of berries and fruits claim their attention 

 during summer and fall; I have found them frequenting regularly 

 the edges of cranberry bogs near the woods, as well as wild-apple 

 trees in secluded spots. 



In winter, when their ground food is buried under the snow, they 

 have to resort to trees and bushes for what fruits and berries are 

 left, for leaves that remain green, and for dried catkins and buds. 

 They are said to feed largely on leaves of sheep-laurel and mountain- 

 laurel; and people have been poisoned by eating birds that had fed 

 on such diet. I wonder if the poisoning was not due to berries of 

 poison sumac and poison ivy, which are easily obtained in winter. 



The ruffed grouse has a bad habit of budding cultivated apple 

 trees, quite extensively when other food crops fail. Forbush (1927) 

 gives us the following surprising figures : 



