378 GAME BIRDS, WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



Season. — Resident entire year. 



Range. — The Ruffed Grouse occupies the eastern United States from 

 Minnesota, Michigan, southern New York and southern Vermont 

 south to eastern Kansas, Virginia and the mountain ranges of northern 

 Georgia. The Canada Ruffed Grouse occupies the spruce region from 

 central Keewatin, southern Ungava and Nova Scotia, south to Mani- 

 toba, New Brunswick, Maine and northern New Hampshire, Vermont 

 and New York, running into western Massachusetts and northern Con- 

 necticut on the mountain ranges, and west to and into the mountains 

 of Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and Idaho; but not to the 

 Pacific coast, where its place is taken by the Oregon Ruffed Grouse 

 (B. u. Sahini). 



History. 



How well the memory retains the first impressions of child- 

 hood when later and more important happenings have faded 

 and grown dim. I can still recall, as if it had chanced but 

 yesterday, my affright and sudden alarm when, as a boy of 

 eight, I stood for the first time in the woods of West Roxbury, 

 with my eye on the spot where my first Ruffed Grouse had 

 just vanished. A hair-raising roar of wings, a whirl of dead 

 leaves, a plunge through foliage and branches, and the bird 

 was gone! There were deep woods then where houses stand 

 to-day. Then the Grouse drummed, the Cottontail fled 

 away from my approach, and the Wild Pigeon called where 

 the House Sparrow chatters now. 



New England is the home of the Ruffed Grouse, and here 

 it is known everywhere by the name of Partridge or "Pat- 

 ridge." In the middle and southern States it is called the 

 Pheasant, but it does not even belong to the same genus as 

 either species of which it is the namesake. It is a true Grouse 

 and is regarded by American sportsmen as the king of game 

 birds. It is introduced in this volume under two subspecific 

 names, because the two varieties both occupy New England, 

 and individuals more or less intermediate between the two 

 are found in Massachusetts; but the Ruffed Grouse {B. u. 

 umhellus) is the bird usually taken in southern New England. 

 We may judge how numerous it was in Massachusetts in the 

 days of old when Morton says that he saw forty in one tree. 

 Nuttall (1834) believed that it was more plentiful in Mas- 

 sachusetts and New England during the early part of the 



