I'50 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 



dire thinks that the drumming cannot be considered a 

 love note because, as he says, "It may be heard almost 

 every month in the year and sometimes in the night as 

 well as in the day time," I am disposed to think that it 

 is really in part a mating call. Other grouse perform 

 certain operations usually thought to be connected with 

 the mating time in autumn as well as in spring. The 

 sharp-tailed grouse holds its dances in autumn, and I 

 have been told that the dusky grouse hoots in the 

 autumn as well as in spring, though by no means so 

 vigorously. Certainly we may believe that at the 

 proper season of the year it possesses an attraction for 

 the female, and S. T. Hammond, in his capital book, 

 "My Friend the Partridge," gives some testimony to 

 this effect. 



The nest of the ruffed grouse is built almost any- 

 where, yet perhaps most often on a hillside more or 

 less steep, overlooking a swamp or a piece of woods. 

 I have found nests among thick cedars on a hillside, or 

 perfectly open and exposed, at the foot of a cedar tree 

 in a mowing lot close to a fence, and again between two 

 cedars in an open piece of cedar wood, where there was 

 no apparent cover whatever. The eggs are laid usually 

 in April or early May, and by the middle of that month 

 the clutch of twelve to seventeen is usually completed. 

 The eggs are cream color or buffy, rarely spotted with 

 brown at the larger end. If the female is startled from 

 her nest she leaves it with a roar of wings, whose rapid 

 beats often spread over the precious eggs the dry leaves 

 by which the nest is likely to be surrounded. On a num- 



