OHIO-BIRDS Archives

October 2015

OHIO-BIRDS@LISTSERV.MIAMIOH.EDU

Options: Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Subject:
From:
Steve Cagan <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Steve Cagan <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 8 Oct 2015 12:59:33 -0500
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (116 lines)
Hi,

I’m also no expert, but several years ago we had Ruffed Grouse near Paradise, IN the U.P. in what might be described as mixed setting, but mostly really spruce forest.

Steve Cagan
Cleveland Heights



> On Oct 8, 2015, at 4:44 AM, marys1000 <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> First, no expert here.  But I felt the need to say that I have never
> heard that Grouse preferred to live/breed in open to mixed habitat. Nor
> have I ever seen them there when in Michigan.  I think I have been told
> that they like populars.  The Michigan DNR recently instituted a Grouse
> habitat area intiative called "GEMS".  People could look at the habitat
> areas selected for these grouse areas pn the MI DNR website, the maps
> are somewhat detailed.  The one I did a little walking in was mostly
> dense forest and I did see Grouse in that habitat.  There was some open
> mixed area at one end though.
> 
> Mary, Fairborn OH
> Native Michgander
> 
> 
> ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2015 10:49:58 -0400
> From: Bill Whan <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: more on the ruffed grouse After a discussion on the status of
> this bird the other day, I heard from some folks who still want to push
> the strangely fashionable notion, all too common among various parks and
> wildlife employees, that the species requires recently-cleared or
> second-growth timber to flourish. I have maintained that if we want to
> describe a native species' preferred habitat we should look at records
> from long ago, when they actually had habitats to choose from. I submit
> Thomas Nuttall's "A Manual of the Ornithology of the United States"
> (1832, during the USA's early decades). This is a large work, and its
> treatment of the "Ruffed Grous Tetrao umbellus" runs into six pages,
> without illustrations. You can read it on the Hathi Trust site at
> http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=chi.44828960;view=1up;seq=665 .
> This came from an era when these birds actually had easy choices between
> dense and second-growth forests. Nuttall's account begins with these
> words, saying that the species "is found to inhabit the continent from
> Hudson's Bay to Georgia, but are most abundant in the Northern and
> Middle States, where they often prefer the most elevated and wooded
> districts; and at the south affect the mountainous ranges and valleys
> which border upon, or lie within, the chains of the Alleghanies. They
> are also prevalent in the Western States as west as the line of the
> territory of Mississippi, but appear to be unknown to the west of that
> great river, where the Pinnated Grous is so abundant." Further he wrote:
> "Although elevated countries and rocky situations thickly overgrown with
> bushes and dense evergreens, by rivers and brooks, are their chosen
> situations, yet at times they frequent the low lands and more open pine
> forests in the vicinity of our northern towns and cities, and are even
> occasionally content to seek a retreat, far from their favorite hills,
> in the depth of a Kentucky canebrake. They are somewhat abundant in the
> shrubby oak barrens of Kentucky and Tennessee in which their food
> abounds." Does this sound like a species that would prefer a
> once-forested situation after being stripped of vegetation? Granted,
> industrial-scale silviculture was only beginning in this era, but
> clearly the birds required an established forest setting. Nuttall and
> others state that the males use a fallen log for drumming; one wonders
> how many hefty drumming logs are around now, even long after a
> clear-cut. It is possible that in the old days many observers failed to
> distinguish between the ruffed grouse and the "pinnated grouse," known
> today as the greater prairie-chicken. The latter species--which at the
> time was not uncommon in the Columbus area, he described as "confined to
> dry, barren, and bushy tracts, of small extent." They were once abundant
> in thinly-forested parts of Ohio; Nuttall mentions that "they were so
> common an the ancient bushy site of the city of Boston, that laboring
> people or servants stipulated with their employers not to have the Heath
> Hen brought to table more than a few times in the week!" Anyway, when
> you hear folks saying that cutting down trees improves habitat for the
> grouse, think again. Bill Whan Columbus
> 
> ______________________________________________________________________
> 
> Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society.
> Please consider joining our Society, at www.ohiobirds.org/site/membership.php.
> Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list.
> 
> 
> You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at:
> listserv.miamioh.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS
> Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]

--------------------------------------------
> Steve Cagan, photographer
> 
> [log in to unmask] <applewebdata:[log in to unmask]>
> www.stevecagan.com <http://www.stevecagan.com/>
> www.elchocomining.net <http://www.elchocomining.net/>
> www.pbase.com/stevecagan <http://www.pbase.com/stevecagan>
> www.stevecagan.blogspot.com <http://www.stevecagan.blogspot.com/>
> http://socialdocumentary.net/photographer/stevecagan <http://socialdocumentary.net/photographer/stevecagan>
> 216-932-2753 (USA)
> 322-344-7909 (Colombia)









______________________________________________________________________

Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society.
Please consider joining our Society, at www.ohiobirds.org/site/membership.php.
Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list.


You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at:
listserv.miamioh.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS
Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]

ATOM RSS1 RSS2