366 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



April and early May the males strut and drum somewhat after the manner 

 of the Ruffed grouse, the sound resembling the distant roll of thunder. 

 It is usually produced when the cock is fluttering up an inclined tree trunk 

 or on a stump and from this elevation to the ground again, or sometimes 

 b)' merely springing into the air for several feet and fluttering to the ground. 

 The nest is placed on a slight elevation in the swamp beside a stump or 

 beneath the low l^ranches of a spruce tree and is constructed of slender 

 twigs and leaves or blades of grass. The materials are added to every day 

 as the laying progresses until a deeply hollowed structure is built up about 

 the eggs, which are from 8 to 14 in number, rather pointed, of a rich buffy 

 or pale brownish color, speckled and spotted with a rich chestnut and blackish 

 brown, and average 1.72 x 1.25 inches in dimensions. The eggs are laid 

 from the 5th to the 20th of Ma}', and the period of incubation is recorded 

 in Bendire's Life Histories as 1 7 days. 



In summer and early fall the food of the Spruce grotise consists lai'gely 

 of berries and tender shoots of plants, and its flesh is well flavored, but in 

 winter it feeds almost entirely on spruce buds and then the flesh becomes 

 bitter and unpalatable. 



Bonasa umbellus umbellus (Linnaeus) 

 Ruffed Grouse 



Plate 41 



Tctrao umbellus Linnaeus. Syst. Nat. Ed. 12. 1766. 1:275 



DeKay. Zool. N. Y. 1844. pt 2, p. 204, fig. 174 

 Bonasa umbellus A. O. U. Check List. Ed. 2. 1895. No. 300 



boud'sa, Gr. ySdmo-os, Lat. bonasiis, bison, the drumming being likened to 



the bellowing of a btill; umbel'lus. poor Latin referring to the umljel, 



or umbrella, formed by the ruffs 



Description. Crested and ruffed; the l^are skin beneath the ruff appar- 

 ently not distensible as in the Heath hen ; tail as long as wings, somewhat 

 doubly emarginate so that it is nearly half diamond shape when spread, of 

 18 broad truncate feathers; tarsi partly feathered in front; phtmage beauli- 

 fitUy l^lended with rufous brown, blackish, and gray; ruffs black or brownish 

 lilack, with greenish or steel-blue iridescence; tail rufous or gray ivitJi a 

 broad subterniinal band of blackish and numerous small broken bars of the 



