158 BULLETIN 162, UNITED STATES NATIONAL, MUSEUM 



ground and indicating nervousness. The squealing or whining note 

 uttered while defending its young is probably also a signal to them 

 to hide, as a clucking note is a signal to older young to fly. Then 

 there is the call of the female to her young, crut-crut, car-r-r, and 

 various soft cooing notes and chatterings. 



Enemies. — Besides its archenemy, man, who has shot and snared 

 it almost to extinction in many places, the ruffed grouse has many 

 natural enemies and is subject to many diseases. It always managed 

 to survive, however, until man came on the scene; its large broods 

 have helped it to come back to normal numbers after periods of 

 scarcity. Foxes destroy large numbers of grouse, as well as their 

 eggs and young; feathers scattered about their burrows and tracks 

 in the snow tell the story. Forbush (1927) says: 



Mr. C. E. Ingalls, writing of an experience at Templeton, stated that he saw 

 a fox approaching the nest of a Ruffed Grouse near the edge of the woods. "A 

 big ball of feathers," writes Mr. Ingalls, " flew out at that fox and drove him 

 some distance into the grassland." The fox, nevertheless, returned to the 

 attack only to die in his tracks by a well-directed bullet from the rifle of the 

 watcher, not, however, until the brute had filled both mouth and throat with 

 egg contents from the nest of the devoted mother. 



Wandering dogs, stray cats (of which we have too many in our 

 woods), lynxes, and perhaps raccoons and weasels kill many old 

 and young grouse, the former being probably mostly caught on their 

 nests. Skunks, opossums, raccoons, and squirrels undoubtedly rob 

 the nests. The goshawk, also called " partridge hawk," levies heavy 

 toll during periods of its abundance ; it is often named as one of the 

 chief causes of the periodic scarcity of grouse. The Cooper's, red- 

 tailed, and red-shouldered hawks probably kill a few. Great horned 

 owls pounce on them in their night roosts and are very destructive. 

 The evidence against the screech owl and the long-eared owl, both 

 of which have been seen eating grouse, does not seem conclusive. 

 Crows are canny nest hunters and doubtless break up many nests; I 

 feel confident that a nest that I was watching was robbed by a family 

 of crows that had a nest near by. Dr. Charles W. Townsend (1912) 

 reports a crow seen flying off with a freshly killed grouse in its 

 claws; examination of the body of the grouse, which the crow was 

 seen to drop, led to the conclusion that the crow had killed it. 



Fall. — Audubon (1840) refers to short migratory flights of grouse 

 in October across the Ohio and Susquehanna Rivers. These are 

 probably nothing more than autumn wanderings in search of food. 

 But there is much evidence of an incipient or suppressed migratory 

 instinct in the erratic short flights of ruffed grouse during the so- 

 called " crazy season " in fall. At such times they certainly do be- 

 have queerly. I have repeatedly known them to appear in my yard 

 in the center of the city, or to kill themselves by flying against build- 



