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Canada Grouse — Part 2
Images coming soon.
Mr. Watson Bishop, of Nova Scotia, who succeeded in domesticating this grouse, tells many interesting fresh facts about it. A sitting hen, after scratching a depression in the ground, first lays three or four eggs before placing any nesting material in the cavity; then she has the absurd habit of picking up straws, leaves, etc., as she leaves the nest, and tossing them backward over her head, to land perhaps on the nest, or perhaps just in the opposite direction if she has faced about with head toward the eggs to secure some inviting material. When a quantity of litter has been collected, she will then sit on the eggs, reach out to gather it in and place it about her until the cradle is very deep and nicely bordered with grass and leaves. Jealousy, a ruling passion with hens at the nesting season, often leads them to steal one another's eggs. One nest should properly contain about a dozen, more or less, the ground color buff or pale brown, the spots and speckles reddish brown or umber; but so great is the variation of color and markings that some eggs have no markings at all, while others are beautifully and clearly decorated. It is possible to rub or wash off markings from many fresh-laid eggs. Laying commences about the first week of June; incubation lasts seventeen days, and by the middle of July the precocious chicks are able to reach the low branches of the evergreens in their first flights and move about on them like the adults that would make expert tight-rope walkers. Tender terminal spruce buds, hack-matack needles, the berries of Solomon's seal, pine needles and cones, and such fare give this grouse's flesh a dark color and a bitter, resinous flavor that tempts only the hungriest woodsmen; although in the berry season, when the birds leave the evergreens to feed on tender leaf buds and fruit, the rich reddish meat is much sought. An immense quantity of gravel is swallowed to aid digestion. Indians tell of following great packs of these grouse that furnished meat to a tribe for weeks; but a bevy of five or six birds is the largest recorded by scientists.