CATALOGUE OF CANADIAN BIRDS. 203 



mountain-ash berries and rose-hips. In winter they feed, in flocks 

 of from ten to twenty or more, on the buds of birch, maple or 

 ironwood, and seem to prefer the latter. During the winter they 

 feed but twice a day in cold weather. These times are at dawn, 

 indeed almost before it is light, and just as it is getting dark. 

 As soon as they have eaten their fill, they dive under the snow 

 and remain there until their next time of feeding. {Spreadborougk.) 

 It breeds early, usually commencing to lay in April. In April, 

 1897, I saw an egg as early as the 14th. Sometimes a strange 

 locality is chosen for a nest. Once I found one containing 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. ) 



MUSEUM SPECIMENS. 



Three specimens, one taken at Ottawa in 1885 by Mr. George 

 White, one at Toronto in 1882 by Mr. S. Herring, and one, a very 

 good B. togata, at Revelstoke, B.C., April 23rd, 1890, by Mr. W. 

 Spreadborough. Two sets of eggs, one taken by Dr. James 

 Fletcher near Hull, Que., and the other near Niagara Falls, Ont., 

 by the Rev. George Taylor. 



300J. Gray Ruffed Grouse. 



Bonasaumbellus unibelloides (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-Thompson, in his Birds of Manitoba, makes 

 this form the resident of the aspen woods of Manitoba, and the 

 writer believes this to be the species found in all parts of the wood- 

 ed portions of the western prairie and the foothills of the Rocky 

 Mountains, including 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. 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 



