CATALOGUE OF CANADIAN BIRDS. 203 
mountain-ash berries and rose-hips. In winter they feed, in flocks 
of from ten to twenty or more, on the buds of birch, maple or 
ironwood, and seem to prefer the latter. During the winter they 
feed but twice a day in cold weather. These times are at dawn, 
indeed almost before it is light, and just as it is getting dark. 
As soon as they have eaten their fill, they dive under the snow 
and remain there until their next time of feeding. (Spreadborough.) 
It breeds early, usually commencing to lay in April. In April, 
1897, Isaw an egg as early as the 14th. Sometimes a strange 
locality is chosen for a nest. Once I found one containing twelve 
eggs at the foot of a beech tree, against the trunk and protected 
by it ; forty feet up was.a red-shouldered hawk’s nest, which in 
due time hatched out, as didthe grouse at the foot. (Rev. C. /. 
Young.) 
MUSEUM SPECIMENS. 
Three specimens, one taken at Ottawa in 1885 by Mr. George 
White, one at Toronto in 1882 by Mr. S. Herring, and one, a very 
good JB. togata, at Revelstoke, B.C., April 23rd, 1890, by Mr. W. 
Spreadborough. Two sets of eggs, one taken by Dr. James 
Fletcher near Hull, Que., and the other near Niagara Falls, Ont., 
by the Rev. George Taylor. 
3006. Gray Ruffed Grouse. 
Bonasa umbellus umbelloides (DouGu-) Batrp. 1858. 
According to the A. O.U. List this form ranges from the United 
States northward into British America, north to Alaska and east to 
Manitoba. Mr. Seton-Thompson, in his Birds of Manitoba, makes 
this form the resident of the aspen woods of Manitoba, and the 
writer believes this to be the species found in all parts of the wood- 
ed portions of the western prairie and the foothills of the Rocky 
Mountains, including the aspen forests on the Peace River and 
northward down the Mackenzie. Mr. W. Spreadborough reports 
this form to have been common from Edmonton to Jasper 
House in the Yellow Head Pass in 1898. In Alaska, however, 
Nelson states that this form is the only one, and that it has its 
home in the spruce forests and goes north as far as these forests 
extend. He also asserts that all specimens from north of Great 
Slave Lake, excepting the coast form, found along the Pacific, are 
referable to the gray northern form. By a careful sifting of the 
