Some Notes on the Ruffed Grouse 



By H. E. TUTTLE, Simsbury, Conn. 



OVER the ridge that brimmed the glade a hen Partridge was hurrying. 

 She did not walk with noiseless step nor did she keep a constant watch 

 for possible enemies. Her footsteps on the dry leaves rustled loudly; 

 her head swung forward and back as she walked, like a barnyard fowl. Twice 

 she stopped, but only for a moment, then the noise of pattering footfalls began 

 again as she ran toward a laurel thicket that flanked the glade. The glade was 

 a bowl-shaped hollow, free from underbrush, with here and there a good-sized 

 chestnut tree. On one side was the laurel thicket, interspersed with birches, 

 behind which rose the steep sides of the bowl. One might have said that it 

 was an amphitheatre set for a play, and not have greatly erred. 



The only spectator was lying flat beneath the low-spreading fronds of a 

 young hemlock which grew near the laurels, halfway up the bowl. He held a 

 bit of cord gripped tight in his hand, and in spite of his difficult position on the 

 hillside he did not move. He had lain there four hours. Had you been there to 

 see, you would have noted, on following up the length of cord, a bunch of 

 leaves supported by a three-legged branch. The bunch of leaves was a camera, 

 the three-legged branch a tripod. 



The Grouse had reached the laurels and had stopped within their shade to 

 reconnoitre her position before traversing that last ten feet in the open, to the 

 spot that had claimed her sole attention for the past half month. The nest 

 with her ten eggs lay in the hollow at the foot of a little rotted stump. It 

 faced the open woods, and in front stood the three-legged bunch of leaves, with 

 its baleful glass eye glaring down into the hollow. The bunch of leaves, like a 

 Cyclops, had stood guard over the nest for a week, and the hen Partridge had 

 begun to regard it as a natural part of the scenery. She was a bit timid still; 

 sometimes as the cord tightened she spread her tail and with ruffs extended 

 hissed into the glass eye, while, unknown to her, the spectator under the hem- 

 lock frond was hoping and praying that she would step back into focus. 



This time she stepped out of the laurel thicket with just a touch of defiance 

 in her pose. The watcher from where he lay lost sight of her after she went 

 under the stump, so that his shots were in a large part lucky, if they were in 

 any way successful. He saw her disappear under the stump, threw a loop of 

 slack down the cord in the hope of provoking a new pose, then drew it tight. 

 The shutter clicked, and the Grouse ran out from the stump and roared up in 

 flight. 



I had been trying for two days to secure a picture of the Ruffed Grouse as 

 she approached her nest. It was quite easy to snap the brooding bird; that 

 merely involved leaving the camera for an hour, to return at the end of that 

 time and pull the shutter by means of a long thread. I had secured some good 

 pictures in that way a week previous. This new game, although it included 



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