Ruffed Grouse

Waterdown ON. May 8 2020. It was an unusual morning of birding for a couple of reasons. I blame the weather for part of it, we are being swept by a strong system bringing Arctic air and snow flurries (!). It is likely to cause considerable mortality among the many insectivorous birds newly arrived from the south. But it’s not unprecedented as you’ll see if you review my post of May 15, 2016.  

 My warbler-hopeful spots were as quiet as I’d expected, which is to say deadly. I found large aggregations of Barn Swallows and Tree Swallows gathered on lakeside trees, hoping, I suppose, to pick hatching insects from the lake’s surface. They were a disconsolate sight, interesting but a bit saddening to watch. I stayed for a while but it was too cold to spend very long there so I decided to explore a couple of rural back-roads in an effort to fill some gaps in the map I carry in my head.

I was not surprised to meet up with a small group of Wild Turkeys, but was very surprised to meet a Ruffed Grouse. It was an encounter reminiscent of my Golden Pheasant incident some years ago, it may help in your appreciation of today’s meeting if you will take a look at that Golden Pheasant story first.  

It was on a very quiet, dead-end road, a rural backwater. I had pulled aside to listen carefully for any sounds from that group of turkeys when I saw a small movement near the edge on the other side of the road. It looked like a Ruffed Grouse taking off into the tangled undergrowth. I couldn’t be sure, so I silenced the car and all of its associated noise and got out to investigate. To my surprise that bird, now certainly a Ruffed Grouse, came back up from the ditch and walked purposefully towards me as if it was a pet expecting a handout. There may well be some truth in that, for there were a couple of houses within a couple of hundred meters or so, perhaps someone had hand-reared it; it certainly identified me as a friend not a foe. I took several pictures with my iPhone and after a few minutes went to leave; astonishingly it followed me to the car!

Now I was really intrigued and turned back to approach it again, carefully and closer, until I was able to pick it up. It didn’t care for that so I opened my hands to let it go and, rather than fly, it fluttered back down, it had no fear of me. Something is very wrong with this picture, almost as wrong as that Golden Pheasant eight years ago. If it makes a difference, they’re in the same family of birds, phasianidae.

Ruffed Grouse are birds of upland forests with plenty of undergrowth for cover. Their plumage is cryptically patterned to make them all but invisible, it almost vanishes in the photo below. This meet-up was a once in a lifetime opportunity for me to appreciate that rich deliberate perfection. See what you think. My Bird of the Day of course.