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Canada Grouse; Spruce Partridge
Adult male--General colour dark grayish brown or nearly black, barred on the back; breast mottled with whitish and buff, excepting lower part of breast, which is black tipped with white. Bright red skin over eye.
Adult female--Upper parts lighter than in the male. Length--15.00.
Breeding Range--The more northern parts of New England and New York, northward.
The nest, which is carefully hidden, generally beneath a low-lying spruce branch, is composed of leaves, dry ferns, moss, twigs, and sometimes weedy grass, placed on somewhat swampy ground in the dense northern forest. The eggs, numbering from 8 to 16, are buff-coloured, with irregular blotches and spots of brown. Size--1.71 x 1.22.
The Canada Grouse, or Spruce Partridge as it is more commonly called, is an inhabitant of the dense forest region of the more northern parts of Maine and New York in the United States. and in Canada as far north as the arctic timber line, where it lives a secluded life among the--spruce, larches, and fir trees being its favourites.
As a game bird it is fairly well known, though its extreme tameness renders it by no means an exciting quarry. So tame is it that in some places it has been caught by means of a noose attached to the end of a fishing-rod. During the breeding season this bird drums, after the manner of the ruffed grouse.
In Maine they breed in May. Incubation occupies 17 days.