have watched grouse
drumming, determine just how the call is given. After a little while
the excitement of a suspected rival's presence wore away, and he grew
exultant, thinking that he had driven the rascal out of his woods. He
strutted back and forth on the log, trailing his wings, spreading wide
his beautiful tail, lifting his crest and his resplendent ruff. Suddenly
he would draw himself up; there would be a flash of his wings up and
down that no eye could follow, and I would hear a single throb of his
drum. Another flash and another throb; then faster and faster, till
he seemed to have two or three pairs of wings, whirring and running
together like the spokes of a swift-moving wheel, and the drumbeats
rolled together into a long call and died away in the woods.

Generally he stood up on his toes, as a rooster does when he flaps his
wings before crowing; rarely he crouched down close to the log; but I
doubt if he beat the wood with his wings, as is often claimed. Yet the
two logs were different; one was dry and hard, the other mouldy and
moss-grown; and the drumcalls were as different as the two logs. After a
time I could tell by the sound which log he was using at the first beat
of his wings; but that, I think, was a matter of resonance, a kind of
sounding-board effect, and not because the two sounded differently as
he beat them. The call is undoubtedly made either by striking the wings
together over his back or, as I am inclined to believe, by striking them
on the down beat against his own sides.

Once I heard a wounded bird give three or four beats of his drum-call,
and when I went into the grapevine thicket, where he had fallen, I found
him lying flat on his back, beating his sides with his wings.

Whenever he drums he first struts, because he knows not how many pairs
of bright eyes are watching him shyly out of the coverts. Once, when I
had watched him strut and drum a few times, the leaves rustled, and two
hen grouse emerged from opposite sides into the little opening where his
log was. Then he strutted with greater vanity than before, while the two
hen grouse went gliding about the place, searching for seeds apparently,
but in reality watching his every movement out of their eye corners, and
admiring him to his heart's content.

In winter I used to follow his trail through the snow to find what he
had been doing, and what he had found to eat in nature's scarce time.
His worst enemies, the man and his dog,