Some Notes on the Ruffed Grouse 



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mosquito-bites and personally conducted tours by ants, was more fraught with 

 failures, but more exciting. 



I was very much surprised when I first saw this hen return to her nest, her 

 footsteps were so noisy. She was not at all the 'each-step-taken-with-care' kind 

 of bird that I had always pictured. She reminded me very much of a broody 



RUFFED GROUSE 

 Photographed by H. E. Tuttle 



Plymouth Rock. (Later observations have persuaded me that individual 

 birds differ very greatly in this. One Grouse that I watched and photographed 

 last spring approached her nest so cautiously that I was unable to detect her 

 slightest footfall until she had approached within ten feet of the spot where I 

 was hiding.) I watched her for an hour one day as she budded a poplar tree, 

 climbing parrot-like from limb to limb with the aid of her stout beak, nearly 

 losing her footing on more than one occasion as she reached for a catkin high 



