40 
BIRDS OF DURHAM AND VICINITY. 
before they flush. When they do go, liowever, they rise vertically 
for a few feet as if shot from a catapult, and then speed away with 
perplexing swiftness. The clear whistled " Fm Bob-white of the male 
maybe heard from April till August. During this time he becomes 
more or less of a wanderer and sometimes strays far away from his 
family, but he is none the less cheerful on that account, and his 
whistling continues with undiminished vigor. They are prolific breed- 
ers, laying about a dozen eggs for a sitting, and frequently rearing 
two broods in a summer. It is a common thing to find flocks in 
September, which are not more tlian half grown. 
Bonasa umbellus. Ruffed Grouse. 300. 
The Rufted Grouse, or Partridge, as New England people call it, is 
a common resident. This region is in the border land between the 
habitat of the Canadian form {Ba/iasa 7u?ibdlus togata^ and that of 
umbellus proper, and the majority of the birds can hardly be said to 
be either the one form or the other. As a rule, however, the gray 
Canadian form predominates. Out of a dozen specimens not more 
than one will be distinctly tawny ; the majority will have gray tails ; 
and one or two will have gray backs throughout. I have examined 
more than thirty that have been killed in this vicinity, and have found 
but two full-grown males with tawny tails. Females average browner 
than the males. The food of the " partridge'' is chiefly vegetable — 
berries, nuts, leaves, twigs — though insects are often eaten by them. 
In the crops and gizzards of twenty-four Ruffed Grouse I have found 
the following kinds of food : Seeds of herbs, red and white oak acorns, 
smooth sumach berries, maple seeds, barberries, apples, thorn apples, 
dogwood berries, choke cherries, black cherries, blackberries, blue- 
berries, withe-rod berries, partridge-berries ; leaves of the follow- 
ing: White clover, red clover, apple, crowfoot, goldenrod, sheep 
laurel, dandelion, sheep sorrel, everlastings, barren strawberry ; and 
also the following buds : Hazel nut, rock maple, apple, birch ; also 
the following insects: Caterpillars, grasshoppers, and crickets. 
There is considerable variation in the number of partridges found 
here from year to year, owing chiefly, I believe, to weather influences 
on the eggs and young. In spite of being persistently hunted they 
hold their own, their education having kept pace with the times. It 
is interesting to note that more than a hundred years ago fears of the 
extinction of this species were entertained by "certain epicureans," 
according to Belknap's History of New Hampshire. Now that the 
practice of snaring is so nearly abolished by wholesome statute, I 
