APPENDIX. 199 



RUFFED GROUSE. Contin. 



" ' This occurred in October. Later in the season, when going the round 

 of my mink and musk-rat traps, I found a male ruffed grouse caught in 

 one of them by the leg. The bird had evidently been caught but a short 

 time before my arrival ; and as the trap which held it was a small and 

 weak one, and the jaws were filled with leaves, the bird's leg had not been 

 broken. I carried the grouse home and put it in a large feed-box which 

 was standing in the open air under the shade of an apple-tree. When re- 

 turning from a hunting excursion, one day, one of my neighbors said, 

 ' Your partridge has been drumming/ I put an old stump in the box of 

 my captive, and it had the desired results, for the next morning it was 

 drumming loudly. I observed its motions when drumming, through a 

 hole in the box, and I am confident that the noise was caused by the wings 

 coming forcibly in contact with each other. Let any person take the 

 wings of a dead grouse in his hands and beat them quickly together over 

 the bird's back, and it will be seen at once that the peculiar sound made 

 by the ruffed grouse, and called drumming, is naturally produced. The 

 ' young-of-the-year ' of the male grouse drum in the autumn more fre- 

 quently than the adult males, as I have ascertained by shooting them 

 when in the act. I have found great difficulty in stalking the grouse 

 at their drumming-posts, and have often failed in my attempt to do it. 

 The male birds fight hard battles in the spring, and I once caught an old 

 cock by the legs in a snare, that had its head cut and bruised very badly, 

 and portions of its neck almost destitute of feathers, the effects of 

 fighting. ' " RIdgway, B., in American Sportsman (qwted by Ooues, Dr. E., 

 in his Birds of the North-west, pp. 422-425). 



" I have myself never witnessed the act ; but my present view is that the 

 noise is made by beating the air simply, not by striking the wings 

 either together or against the body or any hard object." Coneg, Dr. E. : 

 Birds of the North-west, p. 425. 



Finally, Mr. Torrey, who, after repeated observations, 

 declines to say how the " drumming " is done, records a 

 most amusing decision : 



" A man who is a far better ornithologist than I, and who has witnessed 

 the performance under altogether more favorable conditions than I was ever 

 afforded, assures me that his performer sat down !" Torrey, B. : A 

 Rambler's Lease, p. 221. 



