Volume 6, Plate XV / Ornithology (Birds)

Canadian Grouse

Tetrao Canadensis

Tetrao Canadensis, about seventeen inches long, haunts pine woods and cedar swamps from Hudson’s Bay through Canada and the Rocky Mountains, feeding in winter on spruce tops, cones, and juniper berries, which flavour its flesh. Unsuspicious and easily approached, it lays on the ground eggs varied with white, yellow, and black, and when disturbed resorts to trees where a whole flock may be shot from the lowest upward; the female is smaller, duskier, and mottled rusty orange and grey.