RUFFED GROUSE. 101 
they mean to those who love them? The promise of 
Spring, its fulfillment in summer, is clearly told in Bob- 
white's greeting. Then, in the autumn, when the mem- 
bers of a scattered bevy are signaling each other, their 
sweet whére are you? whére are you ? is equally associated 
with the season. 
The Bob-white nests about May 20, laying from ten 
to eighteen white eggs in a nest ov the ground. 
The Raffed Grouse, or Partridge of the North and 
Pheasant of the South, is properly a true Grouse, and 
Ruffed Grouse,  ©@0 not be correctly called either Par- 
Bonasa umbellus, tridge or Pheasant. He is a more 
Plote XL northern bird than the Bob-white, be- 
ing found south of Virginia only in the Alleghanies. 
Requiring large tracts of woodland for his haunts, he 
is less generally distributed and not so common as his 
plump relative. z 
I always associate the Grouse with the astounding 
roar of wings made by the bird as he springs from the 
ground at my feet and sails away through the forest. I 
watch him at first with dazed surprise, then with a keen 
sense of pleasure in the meeting. One need not be a 
sportsman to appreciate the gaminess of the Grouse. 
To find a hen Grouse with young is a memorable 
experience. While the parent is giving us a lesson in 
mother-love and bird intelligence, her downy chicks are 
teaching us facts in protective coloration and heredity. 
How the old one limps and flutters! She can barely 
drag herself along the ground. But while we are watch- 
ing her, what has become of the ten or a dozen little 
yellow balls we almost stepped on? Not a feather do 
we see, until, poking about in the leaves, we find one 
little chap hiding here and another squatting there, all 
perfectly still, and so like the leaves in color as to be 
nearly invisible. 
