Bob Whites, Grouse, etc. 



habitants and voyageurs who penetrate the dark, swampy forests 

 far to the north know it with that degree of intimacy which per- 

 haps because it furnishes the most interesting stories, that are at 

 once the admiration and the despair of city-bred ornithologists 

 is discredited by them as "unscientific." There is a French 

 Canadian, a native of the Laurentian Mountains, whose fleet 

 ponies take many Americans to the Grand Discharge for the oua 

 naniche fishing, who will lead his patrons to a nest beside a 

 fallen log, show them the "drumming trees" where the cocks 

 fly down and captivate their mates with a noise resembling dis- 

 tant thunder, point out a dusky figure in the sombre evergreens 

 that no untrained eye could find as the buckboard rattles swiftly 

 over the corduroy road, and at the camp-fire needs little persuasion 

 to tell more about the Canada grouse than can be learned in the 

 books. 



Very early in spring the cocks begin to strut and give them- 

 selves grand airs. At this season especially, although the birds 

 are never shy, the male exposes himself before an admiring ob- 

 server with amusing abandon. With tail well up, and contracted 

 and expanded at each step until the quills rustle like silk; with 

 drooped wings, head erect, the black and white breast feathers 

 standing out in regular rows, and those in the back of the neck 

 correspondingly depressed; the combs over each eye enlarged at 

 will and glowing red a miniature impersonation of self-conceit 

 struts through the forest, across one's path, flies into a low limb 

 to attract more attention to his handsome body, and has been 

 known to alight on a man's shoulder and thump his collar! 

 Ordinarily he thumps any hard substance with his bill. Some- 

 times, with plumage arranged as above described, he will sit with 

 his breast almost touching the earth and make peculiar nodding, 

 circular motions of the head. To drum, he chooses some favorite 

 tree inclined away from the perpendicular, and, commencing at 

 the base, flutters slowly upward, very rapidly beating his wings 

 to make the rumbling noise. Then, having ascended fifteen or 

 twenty feet, he glides quietly to the ground, struts, and repeats the 

 noisy ascent. A good "drumming tree," well known' to woods- 

 men, often has its bark worn by the small thunderers. Apparently 

 there are many more cocks than hens in every tamarack swamp. 



Mr. Watson Bishop, of Nova Scotia, who succeeded in 

 domesticating this grouse, tells many interesting fresh facts 



271 



