Bob Whites, Grouse, etc. 



yellow line over eye ; sides of neck of male with large tufts 

 of glossy greenish black feathers tipped with light brown, 

 much restricted or wanting and dull in female ; long tail, 

 which may be spread fan-like, yellowish brown or gray or 

 rusty, beautifully and finely barred with irregular bands half 

 buff, half black ; a broad subterminal band of black between 

 gray bands ; throat and breast buff, the former unmarked ; 

 underneath whitish, all barred with brown, strongly on 

 sides, less distinctly on breast and below ; legs feathered to 

 heel ; bill horn color. 



Range — Eastern United States and southern Canada west to 

 Minnesota, south to northern Georgia, Mississippi, and Ar- 

 kansas. 



Season — Permanent but roving resident. 



Neither a " partridge " nor a " pheasant," it is by the former 

 name that this superb game bird is best known to the New 

 Englanders, and by the latter that it is commonly called in the 

 middle and southern states; but this most typical grouse (whose 

 Latin name describes two striking characteristics : Bonasus, a 

 bison, referring to the bellowing bull-like noise produced by the 

 male; and umbellus, to the umbrella-like tufts on his neck) ap- 

 pears in literature and the market stalls alike as a " partridge," a 

 misnomer shared by the Bob White, which strictly belongs to a 

 race of European birds of which we have no counterparts on 

 this side of the Atlantic. What's in a name ? That which we 

 call a grouse by any other name doth taste as sweet. 



Partial to hill country interspersed with cultivated meadows 

 and dingles, or to mountains, rocky, inaccessible, thickly tim- 

 bered, and well watered with bush-grown streams, it is only 

 rarely, and then chiefly in autumn, that coveys leave high alti- 

 tudes to feed along the edges of milder valleys and enter the 

 swamps. The dainties preferred include crickets, grasshoppers, 

 the larvae of caterpillars, beechnuts, chestnuts, acorns of the 

 chestnut oak and the white oak, strawberries, blueberries, rasp- 

 berries, elderberries, wintergreen and partridge berries with their 

 foliage, cranberries, the bright fruit of the black alder and dog- 

 wood, sumach berries (including the poisonous varieties, which 

 do the grouse no injury), wild grapes, grain dropped in the stubble 

 of harvested fields, the foliage of many plants, and the leaf buds 

 of numerous shrubs and trees — a varied menu indeed, responsible 

 alike for the bird's luscious, tender flesh and its roving disposition. 



273 



