222 GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 



strange locality is chosen for a nest. Once I found one contain- 

 ing twelve eggs at the foot of a beech tree, against the trunk and 

 protected by it; forty feet up was a red-shouldered hawk's nest, 

 which in due time hatched out, as did the grouse at the foot. (Rev. 

 C. J. Young.) 



3006. Gray Ruflfed Grouse. 



Bonasa umbellus umbelloides (DoUGL.) Baird. 1858. 



According to the A. O. U. List this form ranges from the United 

 States northward into British America, north to Alaska and east to 

 Manitoba. Mr. Seton, in his Birds of Manitoba, makes this form 

 the resident of the aspen woods of Manitoba, and the writer beUeves 

 this to be the species found in all parts of the wooded portions of 

 the western prairie and the foothills of the Rocky mountains, includ- 

 ing the aspen forests on the Peace river and northward down the 

 Mackenzie. Mr. W. Spreadborough reports this form to have been 

 common from Edmonton to Jasper House in the Yellow Head pass 

 in 1898, and from Lesser Slave lake to the Peace river, Atha., in 

 1903. In Alaska, however. Nelson states that this form is the only 

 one, and that it has its home in the spruce forests and goes north as 

 far as these forests extend. He also asserts that all specimens from 

 north of Great Slave lake, excepting the coast form, found along 

 the Pacific, are referable to the gray northern form. By a careful 

 sifting of the statements of the various observers it wiU be seen that 

 the range of the gray ruffed grouse and the Canadian ruffed grouse 

 are not well defined, and that these forms are so closely related that 

 Mr. Seton's line of demarcation seems to be the true test of the 

 form, or rather colour, and that the resident of the aspen woods is 

 B. umbelloides, while that of the spruce forests is B. togata. This ^ 

 leaves B. umbellus togata on the Atlantic coast and B. umbellus 

 sabini on the Pacific coast. 



The common form in Manitoba. It was collected in 1906 in bluffs 

 and woods from Portage la Prairie, Man., to Edmonton, Alta. 

 {Atkinson.) Moderately common at Aweme, Man., in aspen and 

 willow thickets. Both the gray and the rusty forms are found at 

 Aweme in aspen woods though the latter is much the rarer one. 

 {diddle.) Common at Midway, B. C, seen at Meyers creek,Sidley 

 and Penticton, B.C. {Spreadborough.) Most of the ruffed grouse 



