Identifier: birdsthathuntar00blan (find matches)
Title: Birds that hunt and are hunted;
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors: Blanchan, Neltje, 1865-1918
Subjects: Birds
Publisher: New York, Doubleday, Page & company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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es the tyro out of a good aim. Unusually strong chestmuscles for concentrated but limited exertion, and especially stiffwings, enable the grouse to hurl themselves into the air with athunderous velocity; but, like all their allies, they can steal awayas silently as Arabs, if necessary. Darting away directly oppositefrom the sportsman, a well educated bird quickly places a treebetween itself and the shooter, threading a tortuous maze inand out through the woods, higher and higher, until, havingcleared the tree tops, it is off to freedom. Fear, not a natural, butan acquired state of mind, has not yet blasted the peace of grousein regions where they have never been molested; and knowingno worse enemy there than a fox, from which they are safe whenroosting in a tree, and mistaking the sportsmans dog for one,they have been sometimes credited with stupidity because byremaining on the perch they allow a man to rake the covey.But such assault and battery is happily rare. Certain hawks and 276
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Bob Whites, Grouse, etc. owls do awful execution. Snares of silk and horsehair, poacherstraps, and twitch-ups of young saplings bent by the farmersboy, do much to spoil the sport, that becomes shockingly rareryear by year. To escape pursuit a grouse will often dive intothe snow; and although dense feathers cover its body and legs,it will make a similar plunge to keep warm in extremely coldweather, a solitary shiverer, unlike the Bob Whites, that burythemselves in cosy, snug family parties; but, like them, it, too,sometimes gets imprisoned by an impenetrable ice crust, and soperishes miserably. The Canadian Ruffed Grouse (Bonasa umbelhis togata), to bedistinguished from the preceding by the prevailing gray, insteadof chestnut, of its upper parts, its grayer tail, and its more dis-tinctly barred under parts, almost as clear on the breast andunderneath as on the sides, is doubtless simply a climatic varia-tion, only the systematists seeing a sufficient difference in thetwo birds to justi

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