Last April two males chose drumming logs above the ravine less than 200 metres apart and this guy was not giving up his claim easily. I left him to it.
Sometime in early April the male ruffed grouse chooses a territory with a nice, old, preferably hollow log to use as his bandstand. There he will stand, with ruff fluffed out and tail fanned, and he will drum on and off for hours and days until the girl of his dreams decides that he’s the best drummer around.
This is one of the logs chosen by a ruffed grouse last spring. I wasn’t lucky enough to catch him on it with my camera, but you can tell it’s been ‘chosen’ as it’s covered in droppings.
The Ruffed Grouse is at home in a mixed wood forest. The grouse pictured here live in the mixed wood ravine of an otherwise coniferous forest and nest in the aging willows. Ruffed grouse are distinguishable from the Spruce Grouse, which is more adapted to the boreal forest proper, by the distinctive crest on the top of the head. There are other markings, among them the black-banded tail, but I’ve found that the crest is the easiest way to tell the difference.
I’m used to being confused by seasonal plumage, but grouse are also masters at camouflage and talented shape-shifters. They can disappear in a heart beat. A flurry of flapping wings will be all you see if you startle them, but if they see you coming they will run behind a tree. In either case you’re not likely to find them again. They hide easily right under your nose, shaping themselves as a broken tree limb or a pile of leaves.
It’s very unusual to go for a walk in the coniferous and mixed forests without your presence being heralded by a noisy red squirrel, warning you to keep away from their food cache and young and alerting every other creature within hearing that there is an intruder in their midst.
He wanted to go down, but kept going up and down, and up and down, so I went away and left him to his business.
So I was delighted to meet this lovely critter by the Freeman River campground off Highway 32. It’s obvious he was used to being fed by well-meaning campers, but I hope that he was sensible enough to spend most of his time on his main job, which is stocking his larder for the winter.
Although red squirrels are omnivorous – they will eat insects, birds and other small mammals when the opportunity arises, their main food supply consists of seeds extracted from conifer cones. Their scale-carpeted middens on the forest floor are evidence of a nearby cache and a favourite feeding perch.