The Ruffed Grouse 367 



top nor back (figures 109, no). Number 1 was a brush hut shaped 

 like an Esquimo house, and therefore was so conspicuous that the 

 grouse avoided the nearby log for several days. During the interval 

 this grouse had established himself on a log some two hundred feet 

 away. Near the latter log, profiting by the failure of my former 

 venture, I made for a blind only a breastwork of brush, bark and 

 dead leaves ; low sides were added a day or two later. This 

 blind was begun about 11 a. m., on April 9. Four hours later I 

 was peering through the peephole at the grouse which had been 

 drumming at four-minute intervals for some twenty minutes. 



From blinds number 1 and 2, I repeatedly heard distant drumming. 

 Upon investigation I flushed a grouse from his drumming log about 

 one hundred fifty yards away and beyond a clearing in the wood. 

 Here I at once proceeded to make blind No. 3. For this one I 

 used as a base a convenient old pine stump (figure no). The 

 stump was first torn open, then hollowed out and spread apart and 

 somewhat patched with bark and dead leaves ; a peephole next 

 cut through the side of the stump needed no camouflaging to pass 

 for a Woodpecker hole. 



Each blind was approached from the rear by a narrow path cleared 

 of all brush, dry leaves, twigs and branches for a distance of fifty 

 or sixty feet. This arrangement enabled me to go to and from 

 the blinds unseen and unheard while the grouse were on their logs. 

 One of the drummers would discover me only when he chanced to 

 walk from the log and stroll well around toward my rear. This 

 happened several times. By crouching low I sometimes escaped 

 being seen; and the grouse, after feeding awhile, would return 

 unalarmed to the log. But again, crouch as low as I might, the 

 reiterated " preent, preent " of his alarm call told me I had been 

 detected and that the game was up for that half day. To shield my 

 movements in going and coming the peephole of each blind was 

 provided with a small curtain of dark cloth tacked along its upper 

 edge to the inside of the blind. The glint of the camera lens was 

 shaded by a tube of black paper fitted over the lens mounting. At 

 first it was necessary to be quite careful to muffle the various 

 " clicks " of my graflex camera, this being done by holding a hand- 

 kerchief or a folded shirt over the adjusting keys when setting and 

 releasing them. 



At log No. 3, the usual distance from camera lens to the bird was 

 slightly under eleven feet, or about four feet less than at log No. 

 1, and six feet less than at No. 2. At this log No. 3 my first 

 snapshot was made between wing-beats as the drumming began, 

 but it alarmed the bird (figure 111). At the fall of the shutter 

 curtain my subject bounded up with a loud whir into a nearby tree. 

 In fifteen or twenty minutes I heard him fly to the ground and he 

 soon appeared on the drumming log gingerly walking to the drum- 

 ming spot. Here I got in a dozen shots at him within the next hour, 

 having contrived to deaden the noise of the falling shutter ; still the 

 sound was certainly loud enough to be audible at several times the 

 distance. After the first few weeks neither of these birds showed 



