If you find yourself in the woods in the next few months you may hear a very low thumping sound that increases in speed. (Recordings are widely available, one is mentioned, below.)\u00a0You have to stop and listen; it isn’t very loud but if you are like me you will feel a shiver of pleasure. It is a ruffed grouse drumming, or beating its wings. The females seem to like it as much as we do, and if suitable, ends in romance and a clutch of chicks.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/ruffedgrouse140121sDK.jpg\")
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This grouse has blue feathers on the neck and a grey tail. It is a grey phase, distinguishable from the recently posted\u00a0grouse crosses road<\/a>, a\u00a0rufous phase. It is the same species with different colouring. Here is one site offering recordings of a Ruffed Grouse drumming<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0 Derek Derek Kite has often permitted me to include some of his local images within a posting I made. I have finally persuaded him to make his own posting. I hope this will be the first of many. Alistair … Continue reading
The grey and rufous can come from the same clutch of eggs; the grey phase tends to be more common in the north. We have both in our area. When the male ruffs it’s neck feathers this specimen will show blue feathers. This shot<\/a> shows one ruffing it’s feathers showing dark feathers on it’s neck. It appears to be the gray phase but without the striking blue.<\/p>\n
![This shot<\/a> shows one ruffing it’s feathers showing dark feathers on it’s neck. It appears to be the gray phase but without the striking blue.<\/p>\nHere is one site offering recordings of a Ruffed Grouse drumming<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0\u00a0 Derek Derek Kite has often permitted me to include some of his local images within a posting I made. I have finally persuaded him to make his own posting. I hope this will be the first of many. Alistair … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9625"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9659,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9625\/revisions\/9659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/lh3.googleusercontent.com\/-Ta-7Dqj9vQE\/UYarEoEIZ_I\/AAAAAAAAHqw\/bxh5ALNQvQU\/w1309-h873-no\/20130505_0096.jpg\"){kind=link}