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Re: Ruff Grouse Behavior



I regularly see behavior roughly comparable to this with ruffed grouse on the Blue Ridge Parkway in my part of Virginia, from around mileposts 137 to 158.  The birds are amazingly car-tame, and in fact get hit and killed fairly regularly.

Seth Williamson
Floyd, VA

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 5/15/00 at 6:04 AM Steve Cox wrote:

>On May 13, my wife, my brother and I participated in the Oconee County
>(SC) NAMC.  In our 20 years of birding, we have never seen anything
>quite like this.  A ruff grouse was in the middle of the road (SC 107)
>near Burrell's Ford.  The grouse must have had a suicidal complex.  He
>refused to move from the road.  A pickup truck slowly approached him and
>after deciding that them bird must be crazy straddled him.  The bird
>just ducked his head as the truck passed over him.  We stopped our
>vehicle and Vicki jumped out to chase the bird away.  The bird was
>extremely reluctant to leave.  At one point, she believes that she could
>have caught him. She was as close as 2-3 feet from him.  He finally
>walked down the roadside and eventually flew up in an embankment to some
>mountain laurels.  He began to eat the blossoms. He posed for me to take
>some photos for at least 5 minutes. When we left, he was still in the
>bushes.
>
>Have any of you ever experienced anything like this?
>
>Steve Cox
>Fountain Inn, SC
>srcox@greenville.infi.net