THE RUFFED GROUSE 



107 



This Grouse is in every respect a forest bird. Its ideal 

 home is mixed forest of hardwood and coniferous trees, with 

 the white-tailed deer and gray squirrel for company. Its 

 home extends from Massachusetts and northern New York to 

 northern Georgia, and westward very sparingly beyond the 

 Mississippi to the Dakotas. Besides being beautiful, it is a 

 bird of interesting habits, 

 and its flesh is entirely 

 too fine for its own good. 

 In size it is smaller than 

 the pinnated grouse, or 

 prairie chicken, but in 

 intelligence it is second 

 to no other grouse living. 



The prevailing color 

 of the Ruffed Grouse is 

 rusty brown, but the 

 mottlings of black, gray and white defy intelligent description. 

 Open or shut, the tail is a dream — cross-barred, banded and 

 mottled most exquisitely. It is no wonder that the male 

 bird is fond of strutting, with spread tail; but besides this it 

 has a still more effective means of attracting the female. It 

 perches on a log, secures a good grip with its feet, then beats 

 the air with its wings until you hear at the end of the per- 

 formance a long, quivering resonance disturbing the solitude, 

 like beating upon a Hindoo tom-tom. 



The beats start slowly, but quickly increase in rapidity 

 to the end, thus: " Duml-duml-duml-dum-dum-dumdumdum- 

 dum." The bird does not beat the log, and it does not beat 



EASTERN RUFFED GROUSE. 



