A little girl's rare pet: ruffed grouse.
The drummer drumming.
Like the meadowlark, flicker, sparrows and other birds that spend much time on the ground, the bob-white and ruffed grouse wear brown feathers, streaked and barred, to harmonise perfectly with their surroundings. "To find a hen grouse with young is a memorable experience," says Frank M. Chapman. "While the parent is giving us a lesson in mother love and bird intelligence, her downy chicks are teaching us facts in protective colouration and heredity. [{243}] How the old one limps and flutters! She can barely drag herself along the ground. But while we are watching her, what has become of the ten or a dozen little yellow balls we had almost stepped on? Not a feather do we see, until, poking about in the leaves, we find one little chap hiding here and another squatting there, all perfectly still, and so like the leaves in colour as to be nearly invisible."
CHAPTER XVII
BIRDS OF THE SHORE AND MARSHES
Killdeer
Semipalmated Or Ring-Necked Plover
Least Sandpiper
Spotted Sandpiper
Woodcock
Clapper Rail
Sora Rail
Great Blue Heron
Little Green Heron
Black-Crowned Night Heron
American Bittern