North American Ruffed Grouse Habitats: Gray Red Body, Ground Nest, Buff Egg

Summary: North American ruffed grouse habitats in Canada and in the United States produce gray or red bodies from buff eggs in scraped-out ground nests.

North American ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus) has been designated as Pennsylvania's state game bird since 1931; ruffed grouse in Cherokee National Forest of northwestern North Carolina and eastern Tennessee; Monday, June 18, 2007, 13:30:33: U.S. Forest Service-Southern Region, Public Domain, via Flickr

North American ruffed grouse habitats annoy cultivators because of ruffed grouse appetites for fruit, animate naturalists through year-round distribution ranges and anticipate hunters with ruffed grouse membership in the Galliformes game-bird family.

Ruffed grouses bear a number of common subspecies names and the scientific name Bonasa umbellus (good-roast, or Macedonian bull, sun-shade) for wing-drumming and from tufted necks. Natural enemies, polluted water, predatory humans and severe weather challenge the ruffed grouse, described in 1766 by Swedish zoologist Carl Linnaeus (May 23, 1707-Jan. 10, 1778). Males display black-banded tails, feathered legs, neck patches, raised crests, with brown-barred underparts to white-spotted brown upper-parts southward and gray-barred underparts to white-spotted gray upper-parts northward.

Ten-year lifespans ensure females 100-acre (40.47-hectare), and males 10- to 50-acre (4.05- to 20.23-hectare), territories in North America's all-hardwood, all-softwood or mixed coniferous and deciduous forests.

March through June furnish one 1.5- to 1.6-inch (3.81- to 4.06-centimeter) by 1.1- to 1.2-inch (2.79- to 3.05-centimeter) nine- to 14-egg clutch, with one seven-egg replacement.

Mothers-to-be gather feathers, leaves and needles as lining for scraped-out, shallow ground nests at stump or tree bases, in brush or under logs, rocks or roots. They have one creamy, ivory, pink-brown or pink-buff, smooth, sometimes brown-spotted or red-speckled, somewhat glossy, subelliptical to oval egg per day or two every three days. Mothers-to-be always incline toward insect-heavy, protein-rich diets and never involve fathers-to-be in 21- to 24-day incubations that the last laid egg initiates for the completed clutch.

Bobcats, broad-winged hawks, coyotes, falcons, fisher-cats, foxes, goshawks, great horned owls and people and deforestation, hunting, pesticides, pollution and tourism jeopardize North American ruffed grouse habitats.

Dark-downed hatchlings in 10- to 12-inch- (25.4- to 30.48-centimeter-) diameter nests know black eye-streaks, red-brown upper-parts, yellow-buff breasts, flanks and sides of heads and yellow-white under-parts.

Fast-growing wings, open eyes and quick-functioning bills, feet and legs let hatchlings feed, fly within 10 to 12 days and leave the brood within 12 weeks. Initially insectivorous newborns maintain contact with mothers and siblings while they manage nearby, separate homes shortly after hatching until they move away 12 weeks after birth. Nucivorous (nut-eating), semi-insectivorous, semi-vermivorous (worm-eating) adults need apple, blackberry, blueberry, clover, elderberry, strawberry, sunflower, thorn-apple, wild grape and wintergreen berries, buds, catkins, leaves, seeds or twigs.

North American ruffed grouse habitats offer snowshoe-toed drift-divers warm sleepovers inside snow drifts during winter's coldest temperatures at minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 45.55 degrees Celsius).

Snowshow-like projections from toes and woodland ground-like body coloring prevent the winter forager from plummeting through the upper crust of snow and protect the forest specialist.

Alder, aspen, beech, birch, Christmas fern, dogwood, greenbrier, hawthorn, hickory, hop-hornbeam, maple, mountain-ash, mountain laurel, oak, pine, poplar, spruce and willow qualify as camouflage, host-plant vegetation. Gray, red-brown and white earth tones in habitats as high as the Appalachian Mountains and the Rocky Mountain extensions into Canada and Mexico reveal ruffed grouses. Explosive, short-duration glides on 20- to 23-inch (50.8- to 58.42-centimeter) wingspans suggest 17- to 20-inch (43.18- to 50.8-centimeter), 20- to 22-ounce (566.99- to 623.69-gram) adult presences.

Females and males hissing and, in alarm, vocalizing purrt-purrt-purrt and males sounding thump-thump-thump-thump-thuthuthuth with their wingbeats tell of year-round populations in North American ruffed grouse habitats.

ruffed grouse eggs in leafy nest at Bear Brook Watershed, southeastern Lead Mountain, Hancock County, eastern Maine; Thursday, June 10, 2010, 05:33: Fredlyfish4, CC BY SA 4.0 International, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus) in Cherokee National Forest of northwestern North Carolina and eastern Tennessee; Monday, June 18, 2007, 13:30:33: U.S. Forest Service-Southern Region, Public Domain, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/forest_service_southern_region/16538338774/

ruffed grouse eggs in leafy nest at Bear Brook Watershed, southeastern Lead Mountain, Hancock County, eastern Maine; Thursday, June 10, 2010, 05:33: Fredlyfish4, CC BY SA 4.0 International, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bonasa_umbellus_eggs_and_nest.JPG

For further information:

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Available via SORA (Searchable Ornithological Research Archive) @ https://sora.unm.edu/sites/default/files/journals/condor/v045n03/p0085-p0103.pdf

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Available via SORA (Searchable Ornithological Research Archive) @ https://sora.unm.edu/sites/default/files/journals/condor/v045n03/p0085-p0103.pdf

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Available via SORA (Searchable Ornithological Research Archive) @ https://sora.unm.edu/sites/default/files/journals/condor/v045n03/p0085-p0103.pdf

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