APPENDIX. 199 
Rurrep Grouse. — Contin. 
“© This occurred in October. Later in the season, when going the round 
of my mink and musk-rat traps, I found a male ruffed grouse caught in 
one of them by the leg. The bird had evidently been caught but a short 
time before my arrival; and as the trap which held it was a small and 
weak one, and the jaws were filled with leaves, the bird’s leg had not been 
broken. I carried the grouse home and put it in a large feed-box which 
was standing in the open air under the shade of an apple-tree. When re- 
turning from a hunting excursion, one day, one of my neighbors said, 
‘Your partridge has been drumming.’ I put an old stump in the box of 
my captive, and it had the desired results, for the next morning it was 
drumming loudly. I observed its motions when drumming, through a 
hole in the box, and I am confident that the noise was caused by the wings’ 
coming forcibly in contact with each other. Let any person take the 
wings of a dead grouse in his hands and beat them quickly together over 
the bird’s back, and it will be seen at once that the peculiar sound made 
by the ruffed grouse, and called drumming, is naturally produced. The 
‘young-of-the-year’ of the male grouse drum in the autumn more fre- 
quently than the adult males, as I have ascertained by shooting them 
when in the act. I have found great difficulty in stalking the grouse 
at their drumming-posts, and have often failed in my attempt to do it. 
The male birds fight hard battles in the spring, and I once caught an old 
cock by the legs in a snare, that had its head cut and bruised very badly, 
and portions of its neck almost destitute of feathers, the effects of 
fighting. ’’’ — Ridgway, R., in American Sportsman (quoted by Coues, Dr. E., 
in his Birds of the North-west, pp. 422-425). 
“Thave myself never witnessed the act ; but my present view is that the 
noise is made by beating the air simply,—not by striking the wings 
either together or against the body or any hard object.’’ — Coues, Dr. E.: 
Birds of the North-west, p. 425. 
Finally, Mr. Torrey, who, after repeated observations, 
declines to say how the “drumming” is done, records a 
most amusing decision : — 
“ A man who is a far better ornithologist than I, and who has witnessed 
the performance under altogether more favorable conditions than I was ever 
afforded, assures me that his performer sat down!” — Torrey, B.: A 
Rambler’s Lease, p. 221. 
