Ruffed Grouse Bonasa umbellus Scientific name definitions

“Everyone knows…that the autumn landscape in the north woods is the land, plus a red maple, plus a Ruffed Grouse. In terms of conventional physics, the grouse represents only a millionth of either the mass or the energy of an acre yet subtract the grouse and the whole thing is dead.”Leopold 1953b Leopold, L. B. (1953b). Round River: from the journals of Aldo Leopold. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. Close

The Ruffed Grouse is distributed throughout deciduous and coniferous forests of North America but is most abundant in early-successional forests dominated by aspens and poplars (Populus spp.). Resident in young forests as far north as central Alaska and as far south as northern Georgia, this species finds protection from predators in the canopy of young trees and in the thick understory of shrubs and saplings. Leaves, buds, and fruits of deciduous-forest plants constitute most of its diet. Buds and catkins of aspen, willows (Salix), and birches (Betula) are important winter food in Canada, Alaska, and the northern Great Lakes states.

This grouse bears a cryptic plumage of mottled gray, brown, buff, and black coloration. Its plumage occurs in two color morphs, gray and red (or brown), the tail showing the most noticeable difference in coloration. Intermediates between these occur, and the predominate morph varies geographically: the gray phase predominates in northern parts of the range, the red phase in the south. All Ruffed Grouse (except juveniles) have a prominent dark band near the tip of the tail and a tuft of feathers on the sides of the neck that can be erected into a ruff.

The Ruffed Grouse produces a variety of hissing, chirping, or peeping sounds, but is best known for the drumming sounds produced by the male. The drums are a series of progressively faster thumps produced by air rushing to fill the vacuum created under the wings when they are rapidly flapped in front of the body. The male drums throughout the year, but the vast majority of drumming occurs in spring, presumably to attract females and ward off other males.

The Ruffed Grouse is avidly hunted and, for this reason, harvests are monitored and controlled by bag limits, season lengths, and area closures. Harvest rates may be high in some areas; nevertheless, on local and regional scales Ruffed Grouse populations are usually limited by aging and succession of forests. Wildlife managers work with foresters and hunting groups to harvest small blocks of timber in ways that encourage reproduction of aspen and other early-successional plants. The Ruffed Grouse Society is the largest group of hunter-conservationists dedicated to enhancement of Ruffed Grouse populations and young forests that support many early-successional species.

Most mortality in Ruffed Grouse is caused by predators. Regular and synchronous irruptions of predators in Alaska and Canada are caused by the dramatic 8- to 11-year cycle in numbers of snowshoe hares (Lepus americanus). Scarcity of hares produces heavy predation on sympatric Ruffed Grouse and emigration of hungry predators. Cyclic declines of Ruffed Grouse populations in the Great Lakes region are associated with invasions of Northern Goshawks (Accipter gentilis) and Great Horned Owls (Bubo virginianus) from Canada.

Although most studies of the Ruffed Grouse have had a local focus, many produced widely applicable results. The population cycles in Ruffed Grouse have drawn much research attention. Long-term studies of cyclic populations were conducted in New York (Bump et al. 1947 Bump, G., R. W. Darrow, F. C. Edminster and W. F. Crissey. (1947). The Ruffed Grouse: life history, propagation, management. Albany: New York State Conserv. Dep. Close ), Minnesota (King 1937 King, R. T. (1937). Ruffed Grouse management. J. For. 35:523-532. Close , Eng 1959 Eng, R. L. (1959). A study of the ecology of male Ruffed Grouse (Bonasa umbellus L.) on the Cloquet Forest Research Center. Minnesota. Phd Thesis, Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Close , Gullion and Marshall 1968 Gullion, G. W. and W. H. Marshall. (1968). Survival of Ruffed Grouse in a boreal forest. Living Bird 7:117-167. Close , Gullion 1984 Gullion, G. W. (1984). Grouse of the North Shore. Oshkosh, WI: Willow Creek Press. Close ), Alberta (Keith and Rusch 1989 Keith, L. B. and D. H. Rusch. (1989). Predation's role in the cyclic fluctuations of Ruffed Grouse. Acta XIX Congr. Int. Ornithol. vol. 1:699-732. Close ), and Wisconsin (DeStefano 1982 DeStefano, S. (1982). Harvest and distribution of Ruffed Grouse in northeastern Wisconsin. Master's Thesis, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison. Close , Small et al. 1991a Small, R. J., J. C. Holzwart and D. H. Rusch. (1991a). Predation and hunting mortality of Ruffed Grouse in central Wisconsin. Journal of Wildlife Management 55:512-520. Close , Balzer 1995 Balzer, C. C. (1995). Survival, hunting mortality, and natality of Ruffed Grouse in northwestern Wisconsin. Master's Thesis, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison. Close ). Researchers studied the habitat requirements of this important game bird in many places, such as Minnesota (Gullion and Alm 1983 Gullion, G. W. and A. A. Alm. (1983). Forest management and Ruffed Grouse populations in a Minnesota coniferous forest. J. For. 81:529-532. Close ), Alberta (Rusch and Keith 1971a Rusch, D. H. and L. B. Keith. (1971a). Ruffed Grouse-vegetation relationships in central Alberta. Journal of Wildlife Management 35:417-429. Close ), Idaho (Stauffer and Peterson 1985a Stauffer, D. F. and S. R. Peterson. (1985a). Seasonal micro-habitat relationships of Ruffed Grouse in southeastern Idaho. Journal of Wildlife Management 49:605-610. Close ), and Missouri (Thompson III and Fritzell 1989 Thompson III, F. R. and E. K. Fritzell. (1989). Habitat use, home range, and survival of territorial male Ruffed Grouse. Journal of Wildlife Management 53:15-21. Close ). Important work on diet, nutritional ecology, and feeding was done in Minnesota (Jakubas and Gullion 1991 Jakubas, W. J. and G. W. Gullion. (1991). Use of quaking aspen flower buds by Ruffed Grouse: its relationship to grouse densities and bud chemical composition. Condor 93:473-485. Close ), Alberta (Doerr et al. 1974 Doerr, P. D., L. B. Keith, D. H. Rusch and C. A. Fischer. (1974). Characteristics of winter feeding aggregations of Ruffed Grouse in Alberta. Journal of Wildlife Management 38:601-615. Close ), Tennessee (Stafford and Dimmick 1979 Stafford, S. K. and R. W. Dimmick. (1979). Autumn and winter foods of Ruffed Grouse in the southern Appalachians. Journal of Wildlife Management 43:121-127. Close ), Wisconsin (Guglielmo and Karasov Guglielmo and Karasov 1993 Guglielmo, C. G. and W. H. Karasov. (1993). Endogenous mass and energy losses in Ruffed Grouse. Auk 110:386-390. Close , Guglielmo and Karasov 1995 Guglielmo, C. G. and W. H. Karasov. (1995). Nutritional quality of winter browse for Ruffed Grouse. Journal of Wildlife Management 59:427-436. Close ; Guglielmo et al. 1996 Guglielmo, C. G., W. H. Karasov and W. J. Jakubas. (1996). Nutritional costs of a plant secondary metabolite explain selective foraging by Ruffed Grouse. Ecology 77:1103-1115. Close ), and Virginia (Servello and Kirkpatrick 1988 Servello, F. A. and R. L. Kirkpatrick. (1988). Nutrition and condition of Ruffed Grouse during the breeding season in southwestern Virginia. Condor 90:836-842. Close ). Harvest rates were a major focus of studies in Wisconsin (Kubisiak 1984 Kubisiak, J. F. (1984). "The impact of hunting on Ruffed Grouse populations in the Sandhill Wildlife Area." In Ruffed Grouse management: state of the art in the early 1980s., edited by W. L. Robinson, 151-168. St. Louis, MO: Symp. Proc., 45th Midwest Fish Wildl. Conf. Close , Rusch et al. 1984 Rusch, D. H., S. DeStefano and R. J. Small. (1984). "Seasonal harvest and mortality of Ruffed Grouse in Wisconsin." In Ruffed Grouse management: state of the art in the early 1980s., edited by W. L. Robinson, 137-150. St. Louis, MO: Symp. Proc., 45th Midwest Fish Wildl. Conf. Close , DeStefano and Rusch 1986 DeStefano, S. and D. H. Rusch. (1986). Harvest rates of Ruffed Grouse in northeastern Wisconsin. Journal of Wildlife Management 50:361-367. Close , Small et al. 1991a Small, R. J., J. C. Holzwart and D. H. Rusch. (1991a). Predation and hunting mortality of Ruffed Grouse in central Wisconsin. Journal of Wildlife Management 55:512-520. Close ) and Ohio (Stoll and Culbertson 1995 Stoll, Jr., R. J. and W. L. Culbertson. (1995). Ruffed Grouse hunting pressure and harvest on an Ohio public hunting area. Div. of Wildl., Columbus: Ohio Dep. of Nat. Resour. Close ). In its day, the Ruffed Grouse investigation in New York (Bump et al. 1947 Bump, G., R. W. Darrow, F. C. Edminster and W. F. Crissey. (1947). The Ruffed Grouse: life history, propagation, management. Albany: New York State Conserv. Dep. Close ) was the most sustained and comprehensive study of any game animal in North America. It remains an outstanding work, even by today's standards, and is still the most important reference on the species.