THE SCARCITY OF RUFFED GROUSE IN 1907. 387 



The fact that ticks were abundant in some sections does not prove 

 anything, for in most localities they do not seem to have been any more 

 prevalent than in recent years, and in many not noticed at all while the 

 grouse scarcity was universal. 



8. The scarcity of the ruffed grouse has also been attributed to their 

 being shot and snared by pot-hunters during the closed season. This may 

 have been a contributory factor in a few restricted localities, but pot-hunt- 

 ing is not so widespread nor so serious throughout the whole range of the 

 ruffed grouse as to be accepted as an explanation of their universal scarcity. 



9. That the scarcity of ruffed grouse is to be explained by the resump- 

 tion of an innate migratory instinct causing the birds to leave the section 

 in which they had been raised, is a theory advanced by an individual in 

 Connecticut, and backed by a purely theoretical argument. 



This theory can hardly be sustained. Granting it to be true that this 

 was a migratory year and that the partridges left the localities in which 

 they were raised, where did they go to? Migrating birds move from one 

 locality to another and a movement of this kind is always marked by an 

 increase in the number of birds in that locality which is thus invaded. 

 But no reports have been seen from any locality testifying to any such 

 invasion or increased in the numbers of grouse. So this theory can be 

 dismissed as unsubstantiated. 



Conclusions 



The writer believes that the wholesale destruction of ruffed grouse 

 during 1907 cannot be attributed to any one factor, but that it was due to 

 an unhappy combination of three separate factors, each one of which alone 

 was serious in its effects. 



They are: 



1. The unusual abundance of foxes and, particularly, goshawks during 

 the winter of 1906-7. 



2. The extremely cold, wet and late spring of 1907. 



3. An epidemic of some disease or parasite, or both, just which we 

 cannot now determine. 



The most serious of these was unquestionably the cold, wet and late 

 spring of 1907, which was universal throughout the range of the ruffed 



