28 THE OSPREY. 



Is not the clarion of the chanticleer as much a love note as the warb- 

 ling of the Bobolink, though it answers also another purpose of a challenge to 

 a rival knight of the barnyard? 



The nuptial rites of these fowl are not restricted to the time when ' 'a 

 livelier iris changes on the burnished dove." Most of us are familiar with 

 the behavior of a hen for sometime deprived of male society, and have ob- 

 served that those demonstrations do not occur just before the hen begins to 

 "set." In fact it is more likely to occur in the fall than in the spring. Per- 

 haps domestic fowl are not parallel examples, their habits having been more or 

 less radically modified since the wild state. Yet the fact remains, unless I be 

 mistaken, that copulation does not immediately precede incubation. 



It was in October, I think, at any rate in the fall of the year, that I once 

 observed a male Grouse treading a hen. That this function is, at least to 

 some extent, performed in the fall, is evidence in favor of the drumming 

 being a "love note," if not wholly, at least, partly so. Even if it be at 

 an}' time a challenge to other males, is it not even then indirectly of the same 

 import? 



Euffed Grouse are ferm naturiB, yet, tradition to the contrary notwith- 

 standing, they are easily tamed and in the more unsettled and undisturbed 

 regions are tame and unsuspecting. For some reason they seem partial to 

 the neighborhood of settlements and even in the backwoods frequent clearings 

 and the vicinity of old logging camps. 



A barber in Brunswick, Maine, once had two Grouse that had been caught, 

 having from fright flown into some buildings. They were adult birds and 

 became as tame as any domestic fowl. They would permit him to fondle them 

 and would feed from his hands. 



The Grouse hunter does not have to go far from any of the large cities in 

 Maine to find more or less of these birds notwithstanding their constant perse- 

 cution. 



In a little patch of woods not over a fourth of a mile from the heart of 

 the village of Freeport, twenty years ago and more, every fall I could find a 

 small covey of "Partridges." Last November, I visited this place and found 

 five birds, but they were very much wilder than the birds of the old days. 



Regarding the food of the Rufl'ed Grouse: in reading the menu as pre- 

 sented in Bendire's excellent work, I found no reference to apples. Old 

 orchards near the woods and lone apple trees in the woods are not uncommon 

 in the old settled portions of southwestern Maine. In late fall Grouse are 

 always sought for in these places by gunners, for if there are any of these 

 birds in the vicinity they are pretty sure to be found under the apple trees 

 just before dusk. They feed upon the apples especially if they have been 

 frost bitten and afterwards thawed; besides, clover and other plants, also used 



