212 BIRDS 



mate to their trysting place. It serves also as a challenge 

 to a rival. Blood and feathers may soon be strewn around 

 the ground, for in the spring grouse will fight as fiercely as 

 game-cocks. Sportsmen in the autumn woods often hear 

 grouse drumming at the old stand, merely from excess of 

 vigor and not because they take the slightest interest then 

 in a mate. After the mating season is over, they have no 

 more chivalry than barnyard roosters. 



Perhaps you know what it is to be suddenly startled by 

 the loud whirring roar of a big brown grouse that suddenly 

 hurls itself from the ground near your feet. If it were shot 

 from the mouth of a cannon it could surprise you no less. 

 Then it sails away, dodging the trees, and disappears. 

 Gunners have "educated" the intelligent bird into being, 

 perhaps, the most wily, diflScult game in the woods. 



Like the meadow-lark, ^flicker, sparrows, and other birds 

 that spend much time on the ground, the bob-white and 

 ruffed grouse wear brown feathers, streaked and barred, to 

 harmonize perfectly with their surroundings. "To find 

 a hen grouse with young is a memorable experience," says 

 Frank M. Chapman. "While the parent is giving us a 

 lesson in mother love and bird intelligence, her downy 

 chicks are teaching us facts in protective coloration and 

 heredity. How the old one limps and flutters! She can 

 barely drag herself along the ground. But while we are 

 watching her, what has become of the ten or a dozen Uttle 

 yellow balls we had almost stepped on? Not a feather do 

 we see, until, poking about in the leaves, we find one little 

 chap hiding here and another squatting there, all perfectly 

 still, and so like the leaves in color as to be nearly in- 

 visible." 



