196 SOME COMMON LAND-BIRDS. 



many as eighty of the sharp-angled little nuts and appear not 

 to mind their points and corners. 



It takes a great quantity of food to satisfy the grouse. Of 

 poplar twigs he will eat a cupful for a meal if left to satisfy 

 his appetite undisturbed. After a full meal his crop is swelled 

 enormously, for he keeps them in his crop until he has col- 

 lected his full supply. Thus, like the cow and other ruminant 

 animals, he can gather a supply quickly and digest at his 

 leisure, in some more retired and safer spot, if necessary. 



' Supper gathered, the ruffed grouse seeks his bed. Some- 

 times he settles down in a sheltered nook ; sometimes, and 

 especially in snowy weather, he dives quite beneath the light 

 snow and lets it fall upon him like a coverlet of down. These 

 are his warmest nights. If he likes his quarters, he may stay 

 beneath the snow for several days, picking up goldthread 

 leaves, or beechnuts, or checkerberry leaves, or whatever food 

 lies beneath the snow. Is it dark there ? Not mirk dark, I 

 fancy, but like being down cellar when the windows are 

 blocked with snow, for the snow is translucent a soft light 

 comes through it as through a porcelain lamp-shade. Soft, 

 dry snow also contains a large amount of air, so that the 

 grouse can breathe easily under the snow. 



If the storm change to rain, forming a stiff crust above him, 

 he has, as it were, a glass roof to his house. But that he is ever 

 imprisoned beneath the crust and dies there, as we so often 

 read, there is little likelihood. I have never known a case that, * 

 when followed up, proved to be more than hearsay. Wher- 

 ever the snow is deep, 'the grouse lives easily beneath the 

 crust, wandering at will beneath it in search of food, and com- 

 ing out either by bursting up through it or by picking an exit in 

 some place where the crust is weak. The only accident I ever 

 knew to happen to a grouse in winter was when one had his 





