BUFFED GROUSE 155 



Those feeding near the ends of long and slender branches had some difficulty 

 in keeping their foothold and were constantly obliged to jerk up their tails, and 

 flutter their wings in order to preserve their balance, especially when as often 

 happened, they stretched forward or even for a moment bent almost straight 

 downward after the manner of Redpolls or Pine Siskins similarly engaged. 

 They picked off and swallowed the buds in rapid succession, with much the 

 same quick, bobbing motion of the head as that of a domestic fowl feasting on 

 corn. The supply of such buds as they chose, within reach of the most favour- 

 ing percb, seldom lasted more than a minute or two. When it became exhausted 

 the partridge either moved still farther out among the terminal twigs, or flew 

 to another part of the tree. Birds at work not far from the trunk behaved 

 somewhat differently, and with decidedly more dignity and deliberation, doubt- 

 less because the buds they were obtaining grew on short twigs within easy 

 reach of thick and perfectly rigid branches on which they could stand or work 

 as easily as on level ground. 



Behavior. — There is a striking difference in behavior between the 

 unsophisticated grouse of the primitive wilderness and that of the 

 wise and wary birds of thickly settled regions. Birds that have 

 never heard the roar of a gun and have not learned to know their 

 dangerous human enemies are often absurdly, almost stupidly, tame ; 

 whereas the birds that have been persistently hunted have developed 

 such a high degree of wariness and strategy as to make it difficult to 

 outwit them. Formerly in much of New England and eastern Canada 

 the ruffed grouse well deserved the name of " fool hen," and was one 

 of the easiest of birds to shoot. It would either walk quietly away 

 or fly up into the branches of a tree and stare stupidly at the 

 intruder. It was an easy matter for a good shot to pick off its 

 head with a rifle, and it was considered unsportsmanlike to shoot 

 grouse in any other way. It has often been said that, when a number 

 of grouse are perched in one tree, if the lowest one is shot first and 

 then the next lowest one, the others will remain until the last one is 

 killed. I doubt, however, if this has often happened ; it hardly seems 

 credible; and even in Audubon's time it was doubted. Even now, 

 in the wilder portions of Canada, in the southern Alleghenies, and in 

 some of the Western States, the grouse are absurdly tame and take 

 but little notice of human beings. 



The normal behavior of sophisticated ruffed grouse will be referred 

 to later, but, while we are on the subject of tameness, we must con- 

 sider the numerous cases recorded in print of abnormal tameness of 

 individual grouse in regions where their fellows are the wildest. 

 Space will not permit reference to all of more than a dozen such 

 cases of peculiar behavior that I have heard or read about; one or 

 two samples must suffice. In all these cases an individual grouse, 

 sometimes a male and sometimes a female, showed a strong attach- 

 ment for, or a decided interest in, one or more human beings, with 

 the element of fear entirely eliminated. Carleton D. Howe (1904) 

 published a full account of the behavior of a hen grouse that devel- 



