1
2024 Lancaster County Junior Envirothon
Forest Birds
Forest Birds
Saw-whet Owl and Call
Barred Owl and Call
Goshawk
Wild Turkey
Black-capped Chickadee
Tufted Titmouse
Wood Thrush and Call
Pileated Woodpecker
Scarlet Tanager
White-breasted Nuthatch
Eastern Towhee and Call
Ruffed Grouse and Call
References:
http://www.pgc.pa.gov/Education/WildlifeNotesIndex/Pages/default.aspx
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/search/
Bird Call links
For 1, 2, and 3, listen to the sound on the page that opens (green oval). For the Barred Owl (4), listen to the
top 3 to hear a variety of typical calls. Listen to the drumming for the Ruffed Grouse (5).
1. Saw-whet Owl: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Northern_Saw-whet_Owl/
2. Wood Thrush: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Wood_Thrush
3. Eastern Towhee: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Eastern_Towhee
4. Barred Owl: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Barred_Owl/sounds
5. Ruffed Grouse: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Ruffed_Grouse/sounds
2
Saw-Whet Owl
With a body length of eight inches and an 18-inch wingspan, the
saw-whet is the smallest Pennsylvania owl. Its plumage is dull
chocolate-brown above, spotted with white, and its undersides
are white spotted with dark reddish-brown. Juveniles have rich
chocolate-brown color over most of their bodies. This species
has no ear-like feather tufts. The saw-whet’s call is a mellow,
whistled note repeated mechanically, often between 100 and
130 times a minute: too, too, too, too, too, etc. This sound
suggests the rasping made when sharpening a saw — hence the bird’s name. The saw-whet
is nocturnal and seldom seen. By day, it roosts in young, dense hemlocks or thickets. Saw-
whet owls breed from March to April; they nest in deserted woodpecker and squirrel holes,
hollow trees or stumps, and nesting boxes. Females lay 4-6 eggs that hatch after 21-28
days. Immatures leave the nest when about a month old. Saw-whets feed on insects, mice,
frogs, bats, voles, shrews, and small birds. In turn, they are preyed upon by barred and
great-horned owls.
Fun facts:
• The main prey items of the Northern Saw-whet Owl are mice, especially deer mice of
the genus Peromyscus. Saw-whets usually eat adult mice in pieces, throughout two
meals.
• The female saw-whet keeps the nest very clean, but a mess starts to accumulate
when she leaves. By the time the young owls leave the nest, 10 days to 2 weeks later,
the nest cavity has a thick layer of feces, pellets, and rotting prey parts.
Northern Goshawk
The largest of our accipiter group, goshawks are 20 to 26 inches
long with a wingspread of 40 to 47 inches and weight of 1½ to 3½
pounds. Both immatures and adults have a prominent white line
over each eye; the eyes of adults are bright red. Adults are blue-
gray above and white below, with light barring on the breast.
Immatures are brown above and creamy white below, with
heavily streaked undersides. In PA, goshawks are seen in greatest
numbers in winter, when food scarcities force many south. Also
called “blue darters,” goshawks are swift, maneuverable, and
relentless, sometimes pursuing prey — birds and small mammals — through thick
underbrush on foot. Goshawks breed in wooded areas and prefer wild territory, such as the
mountainous areas of northern Pennsylvania. They nest up to 75 feet above the ground in
trees, building bulky nests (3 to 4 feet in diameter). A pair often uses the same nest year
3
after year. Females lay 3 to 4 off-white and usually unmarked eggs which they alone
incubate for 36 to 38 days. Goshawks defend their nests fiercely; the voice is a harsh ca ca
ca ca around the nest.
Fun facts:
• The name goshawk comes from the Old English word for “goose hawk,” a reference
to this raptor’s habit of preying on birds. Falconers have trained goshawks for more
than 2,000 years; the birds were once called “cook’s hawk” for their success at
snaring meat for the pot.
• Northern Goshawk pairs build and maintain up to eight alternate nests within their
nesting area. Even with options available, they may use the same nest year after year
or may switch to a new nest after a brood fails. Pairs may add fresh conifer needles
to the nest during breeding. Aromatic chemicals (terpenes) in the needles may act as
a natural insecticide and fungicide.
Black-Capped Chickadee
A black cap and bib, buffy flanks, and a white belly mark
this small (five-inches long), spunky bird. Chickadees
have short sharp bills and strong legs that let them hop
about in trees and cling to branches upside down while
feeding. They fly in an undulating manner, with rapid
wingbeats, rarely going farther than 50 feet at a time.
The species ranges across northern North America, living in deciduous and mixed forests,
forest edges, thickets, swamps, and wooded areas in cities and suburbs. Black-capped
chickadees are common throughout Pennsylvania, except for the state’s southwestern and
southeastern corners, where they’re replaced by the similar Carolina chickadee. About two-
thirds of a chickadee’s diet consists of animal protein: moth and butterfly caterpillars
(including early growth stages of gypsy moths and tent moths), other insects and their eggs
and pupae, spiders, snails, and other invertebrates. In late summer and fall, chickadees eat
wild berries and the seeds of ragweed, goldenrod, and staghorn sumac. In the fall
chickadees begin storing food in bark crevices, curled leaves, clusters of pine needles, and
knotholes. The birds rely on these hoards when other food becomes scarce. Chickadees
also eat suet from feeding stations and fat from dead animals. In winter, chickadees live in
flocks of six to 10 birds with one dominant pair. Listen for the chick-a-deedee-dee calls that
flock members use to keep in contact while foraging around a territory of 20 or more acres.
A flock will defend its territory against other chickadee flocks. At night chickadees roost
individually in tree cavities or among dense boughs of conifers. Chickadees mate for life. In
spring, the winter flocks break up as pairs claim nesting territories ranging from 3 to 10
acres in size. Chickadees nest in May and June. The usual site is a hole in a tree, dug out by
both sexes. The birch tree is a favorite because this tree’s tough outer bark stays intact
4
after the inner wood rots and becomes soft enough for chickadees to excavate. Chickadees
also clear out cavities in aspen, alder, willow, and cherry trees, and use abandoned
woodpecker holes. The cavity is usually 4 to 10 feet above the ground. The female
assembles the nest by laying down a base of moss and then adding softer material such as
animal fur or plant fiber. House wrens compete for nest cavities and may destroy chickadee
eggs and broods; raccoons, opossums, and squirrels raid nests. Chickadees will re-nest if a
first attempt fails. Only one brood is raised per year. The five to nine eggs are white with
reddish-brown dots. The female incubates them, and the male brings her food. The eggs
hatch after 12 days. Juveniles beg loudly and are fed by both parents. Young fledge about
16 days after hatching. Some three to four weeks after fledging, the young suddenly
disperse, moving off in random directions. As winter approaches, they join feeding flocks.
Some become “floaters,” moving between three or more flocks, ready to pair with an
opposite-sex bird should its mate die. Chickadees are taken by many predators including
sharp-shinned hawks, American kestrels, Eastern screech owls, saw-whet owls, and
domestic and feral cats. Sometimes chickadees mob these enemies while sounding zee-
zee-zee alarm calls. The average life span for a chickadee is two and a half years, and the
current longevity record is 12 years, nine months. Every few years long-distance
movements take place within the population, “irruptions” that may be launched by failure
of seed crops or high reproductive success.
Fun Fact
• A roosting chickadee tucks its head under a wing to conserve body heat. On cold
nights, a chickadee’s temperature drops from a normal 108° F to about 50° F, causing
the bird to enter a state of regulated hypothermia which saves significant amounts of
energy. Chickadees lose weight each night as their bodies slowly burn fat to stay
alive; they must replace those fat stores by feeding during the next day.
• The Black-capped Chickadee hides seeds and other food items to eat later. Each item
is placed in a different spot and the chickadee can remember thousands of hiding
places.
• Every autumn Black-capped Chickadees allow brain neurons containing old
information to die, replacing them with new neurons so they can adapt to changes in
their social flocks and environment even with their tiny brains.
• Chickadee calls are complex and language-like, communicating information on
identity and recognition of other flocks as well as predator alarms and contact calls.
The more dee notes in a chickadee-dee-dee call, the higher the threat level. Most
birds that associate with chickadee flocks respond to chickadee alarm calls, even
when they don’t have a similar alarm call.
5
Wood Thrush
Mid-April to early May is when the first calls of wood
thrushes are likely to be heard percolating through the
woods in central Pennsylvania. The flutelike song is usually
rendered as ee-o-lay, and it goes on increasingly through
May, especially at dawn and dusk. Wood thrushes have
reddish heads, olive backs and tails, and prominently
spotted breasts; they are not as shy as other forest
thrushes nor as bold as robins. Wood thrushes feed on beetles, caterpillars, crickets, ants,
moths, and sowbugs, plus spiders, earthworms, and snails. They also eat many fruits and
berries. Wood thrushes nest throughout eastern North America. They are statewide in
Pennsylvania in moist lowland woods, dry upland forests, wooded ravines, orchards, city
parks, and wooded suburbs. Territories range in size from a quarter of an acre to two acres.
The female builds her nest on a branch or in a fork of a tree 6 to 50 feet above the ground
(on average, 10 feet high), using grasses, moss, bark, and leaves cemented together with
mud. An inner cup is lined with rootlets. The eggs are pale greenish blue. The young hatch
after two weeks and leave the nest some 12 days later. Brown-headed cowbirds frequently
parasitize wood thrush nests, although in some cases the unrelated cowbird young may not
affect the growth or success of the host’s young. House cats, black rat snakes, flying
squirrels, grackles, blue jays, weasels, and white-footed mice take eggs, nestlings, and
young. Wood thrushes stop singing in late summer but continue to sound bwubububub
contact notes and bweebeebeebee alarm calls. They head south in August and September
to forests from southeastern Mexico to Panama. The wood thrush population has declined
markedly since the 1980s, perhaps because fragmented forests in the Northeast make
wood thrush nests more accessible to predators and to cowbirds, which dwell in more
open country. Wood thrushes have also lost crucial habitat through deforestation in their
wintering range.
Fun facts:
• A songbird like the Wood Thrush requires 10 to 15 times as much calcium to lay a
clutch of eggs as a similar-sized mammal needs to nurture its young. That makes
calcium-rich food supplements like snail shells crucial to successful breeding. These
are rare in soils subject to acid rain, which may help explain patterns of population
decline in the Wood Thrush.
• The Wood Thrush is a consummate songster and it can sing “internal duets” with
itself. In the final trilling phrase of its three-part song, it sings pairs of notes
simultaneously meaning at the same time, one in each branch of its y-shaped syrinx,
or voicebox. The two parts harmonize with each other to produce a haunting,
ventriloquial sound.
6
Scarlet Tanager
Males arrive on the breeding range in southeastern PA
where Lancaster County is located from late April to early
May, just as trees are beginning to leaf out. Their bodies
are red, and their wings and tails are jet-black. Females,
which show up a few days later, are a greenish yellow
that blends with the leaves in which they rest and feed.
Adults are about seven inches in length. Scarlet tanagers favor dry, upland oak woods. They
also inhabit mixed and coniferous forests and shade plantings in suburbs and parks. Males
claim two- to six-acre territories by singing almost constantly from prominent perches and
driving away competing males. Insects and fruits form the bulk of the diet. Scarlet tanagers
nest in late May and June. Females forage higher in the tree canopy than males. Both males
and females work slowly and methodically, inspecting leaves, twigs, and branches and
picking at leaf clusters near the ends of twigs. Scarlet tanagers leave Pennsylvania in
September and early October. They migrate mainly through the Caribbean lowlands of
Middle America and spend most of the year east of the Andes in remote forests of
Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Scarlet tanagers nest statewide in Pennsylvania and
are more common than many people think. The highest populations occur in mature,
extensive forests. Scarlet tanagers are absent from treeless urban areas and intensively
farmed lands.
Fun Fact:
• Scarlet Tanagers often play host to eggs of the Brown-headed Cowbird, particularly
where the forest habitat has been fragmented. When a pair of scarlet tanagers
notices a female cowbird approaching, they aggressively drive her away. If they don’t
notice, the cowbird gets rid of a scarlet tanager egg in the nest and replaces it with
one of her own. The scarlet tanagers apparently can’t tell the difference, either
before or after the egg hatches, and they raise the imposter along with the rest of
their brood.
7
Eastern Towhee
Formerly called the rufous-sided towhee, this large (seven
to eight inches), long-tailed sparrow breeds statewide in
Pennsylvania. Adults have rusty sides, white bellies, and
solid-colored backs and heads that are black in the male
and brown in the female. The eyes are red. Males sing a
distinctive “drink your tea,” with the middle syllable low
and the last syllable drawn out and quavering. Both males
and females frequently give an emphatic chewink or tow-hee call. A way to locate the birds
is to listen for the rustling they make while searching for food in leaf litter. Towhees
energetically turn up leaf litter on the ground by hopping back and forth, scratching with
both feet. They pick up various insects, spiders, millipedes, and snails as well as seeds, small
fruits, berries, and acorns. In April, males arrive from southern states in small bands,
disperse, and, singing from high perches, proclaim individual territories of one-half to two
acres. Females show up about a week later. They scuff out shallow depressions in the
ground and build bulky but well-camouflaged nests of leaves, bark strips, and other plant
matter, lined with fine grasses and pine needles. In Pennsylvania, the Eastern towhee nests
from late April into August with most pairs producing two broods. The estimated life span
of a towhee is four to six years. Eastern towhees are found mainly in second-growth
forests, overgrown fields, woods edges, clear-cuts, hedgerows, thickets, dense brush, and
the understory of open deciduous woods. The clearing of the Eastern deciduous forests in
the late 1800s helped the Eastern towhee populations to expand. More recently, as old
fields have matured into woods, the population of this species has declined noticeably.
Rarely do they live in suburban yards, cities, or intensively farmed areas.
Fun fact:
• The Eastern Towhee and the very similar Spotted Towhee of western North America
used to be considered the same species, the Rufous-sided Towhee. The two forms
still occur together in the Great Plains, where they sometimes interbreed. This is a
common evolutionary pattern in North American birds – a holdover from when ice
sheets split the continent down the middle, isolating birds into eastern and western
populations that eventually became new species.
8
Barred Owl
The barred owl is a large bird of the deep woods. It has a
smooth, rounded head, and brown eyes (it’s the only
brown-eyed Pennsylvania owl except for the barn owl; all
others have yellow eyes). The barred owl ranges over the
eastern United States, its distribution often coinciding
with that of the red-shouldered hawk. A barred owl
weighs up to two pounds, with a 44-inch wingspan and
body length up to 20 inches. It has gray-brown plumage
with white spots on the back; whitish or grayish underparts are barred with buff or deep
brown, the barring crosswise on the breast and lengthwise on the belly. The barred is the
most vocal of our owls. Its hoots are more emphatic than those of the great horned owl,
but not as deep or booming. The barred owl’s call is eight accented hoots, in two groups of
four hoots: hoohoo-hoohoo . . . hoo-hoo-hoohooaw (described as “Who cooks for you, who
cooks for you all?”). It usually calls early in the night, at dawn, and occasionally on cloudy
days. Barred owls almost always nest in hollow trees, laying 2-4 eggs that hatch in 28-33
days. Pairs may show strong attachment to the same nest area, returning year after year.
Fun facts:
• Barred Owls don’t migrate, and they don’t even move around very much. Of 158
birds that were banded to be studied by scientists and then found later, none had
moved farther than 6 miles away.
• Young Barred Owls can climb trees by grasping the bark with their bill and talons,
flapping their wings, and walking their way up the trunk.
Wild Turkey
The wild turkey is a shy, permanent resident of
Pennsylvania’s woods and mountains. Turkeys
have long been important to humans in North
America. Native Americans hunted them for food,
and some natives even domesticated the big
birds. Later, the wild turkey became a steady food
source for settlers. It earned a symbolic role as
the main course of the Thanksgiving meal, which
epitomized the successful harvest. The wild turkey is native only to the North American
continent. Turkeys are related to grouse, quail, pheasants, and chickens. Adult males, also
called gobblers or toms, stand 2½ to 3 feet tall and are 3 to 4 feet long. Females, or hens,
are about one-third shorter and weigh about half as much. Gobblers weigh up to 25
9
pounds, averaging 16. Adult hens weigh 9 to 10 pounds, and 6-month-old birds, 6 to 13
pounds. Tail feathers and tail coverts are tipped chestnut brown. The plumage is an overall
rich brown. In shadows, turkeys appear black; in bright sunlight, their feathers gleam with
copper, blue, green, and mahogany highlights. A hen’s plumage is duller and not quite as
iridescent, and her breast feathers end in a brown or buff band, while those of a gobbler
are tipped with black. Gobblers have spurs—sharp, bony spikes on the backs of their legs
that are used in fighting—and rough, black “beards,” growths of rudimentary, hair-like
feathers called mesofiloplumes, which protrude from their breasts. Usually, hens have
neither spurs nor beards. A gobbler’s head is practically bare, while the hen has fine
feathers on the back of her neck and head. A fleshy, pencil-like appendage called a
caruncle, or snood, dangles from between the gobbler’s eyes. The heads of hens are bluish-
gray, and their necks may appear somewhat pinkish, whereas gobblers’ heads are pink to
red. The bulk of a turkey’s diet is plant-based though in summer, they eat more insects,
arachnids including ticks, as well as snails and slugs. Turkeys can range up to several miles a
day in search of food and water, sometimes establishing regular feeding areas if left
undisturbed. Turkeys hide cleverly, fly an estimated 40 to 55 mph, cover more than a mile
while airborne, and swim with ease, but turkeys usually rely on their feet to escape danger.
The strides of chased gobblers have been measured at 4 feet and their top running speeds
are estimated at 18 mph. Each evening, turkeys fly into trees to spend the night. They
prefer the shelter of conifers during inclement weather. Turkeys make a wide range of
sounds. The best known is the male’s gobble (described ill-obble-obble-obble), used in
spring to attract females and proclaim territory. Foxes, bobcats, and great horned owls
prey on nesting hens; eggs are eaten by these predators plus minks, raccoons, opossums,
black snakes, skunks, crows, red squirrels, and even house cats. Young turkeys are called
poults. Easy game for predators, their main defense is to hide. They scatter and freeze at
the hen’s warning call, remaining motionless until she sounds the all-clear. A hen might
feign injury to lure intruders away from her young. Although susceptible to diseases,
turkeys are hardy animals. Periodically, a harsh winter might lead to starvation, especially if
there is deep, powdery snow, which makes it difficult for birds to become airborne. In the
year 1900, few turkeys were left in the eastern United States, largely because widespread
logging of trees had destroyed their woodland habitat. The Pennsylvania Game Commission
works to improve turkey habitat, especially brood and winter-range habitat, which tend to
be limiting factors for populations. Wild turkeys can now be found in every county within
Pennsylvania. Turkeys seem to do best with a mix of forested, actively farmed, and
reverting farmland habitat types. Trees such as oaks, beech, and cherries are most
beneficial to turkeys when producing the maximum mast; this occurs when trees are 50 to
100 years old. Planting shrubs such as crabapple, serviceberries, high-bush cranberry, and
Washington hawthorn, or allowing clumps of brush such as blackberries and raspberries to
grow will provide abundant and persistent winter foods. Forest clearings are especially
used by hens and poults. Here, sunlight penetrates the tree canopy and allows grasses to
10
spring up. Increased plant life gives rise to increased insect life, and insects form a key part
of a young turkey’s diet.
Fun Facts:
• Benjamin Franklin so admired the big bronze bird that he wanted it for our national
emblem. Comparing it to the bald eagle, he said: “The turkey is a much more
respectable bird, and withal a true original Native of America.”
• The English name of the bird may be a holdover from early shipping routes that
passed through the country of Turkey on their way to delivering the birds to
European markets.
• When they need to, turkeys can swim by tucking their wings in close, spreading their
tails, and kicking.
Tufted Titmouse
This trim bird has gray-and-white plumage, a prominent
head crest, and black “shoebutton” eyes. The species
ranges through eastern North America into southern
New York and New England. It has extended its range
northward over the last half-century, perhaps because
of climatic warming and an increase in bird feeding by
humans. In the early l900s the tufted titmouse was
absent from northern Pennsylvania; today it breeds
statewide. Titmice eat insects, spiders, snails, seeds, nuts and berries. Like the chickadee,
the titmouse forages by hopping about in tree branches, and often hangs upside down
while inspecting the underside of a limb. To open a nut or seed, the bird holds the object
with its feet and pounds it open with its bill. Titmice cache many seeds; with sunflower
seeds, the birds usually remove the shell and hide the kernel within 120 feet of the feeding
station, under loose bark, in cracks or furrows in bark, on the ground, or wedged into the
end of a broken branch or twig. Winter flocks are often made up of parents and their young
of the previous year. Titmice are early breeders: males start giving their “Peter-Peter”
territorial song in February. In Pennsylvania, pairs begin building nests in late March and
early April. Titmice are believed not to excavate a nest cavity on their own; instead, they
use natural cavities or abandoned woodpecker holes. Breeding territories average 10 acres.
The female lays five or six eggs, which are white with dark speckles and incubates them for
two weeks. The young fledge about 18 days after hatching. Sometimes yearling birds stay
on in the territory of their birth and help their parents rear the next year’s brood.
11
Fun facts:
• Tufted Titmice nest in tree holes (and nest boxes), but they can’t excavate nest
cavities to use. Instead, they use natural holes and cavities left by woodpeckers.
These species’ dependence on dead wood for their homes is one reason why it’s
important to allow dead trees to remain in forests rather than cutting them down.
• Tufted Titmice often line the inner cup of their nest with hair, sometimes plucked
directly from living animals. The list of hair types identified from old nests includes
raccoons, opossums, mice, woodchucks, squirrels, rabbits, livestock, pets, and even
humans.
Pileated Woodpecker
The largest American woodpecker (except for the rare,
if not extinct, ivorybill woodpecker) has a length of 12 -
17 inches and a wingspread of up to 27 inches. The
Pileated woodpecker is crow-size but with a long,
slender neck. Also called the Indian hen and log cock, a
pileated woodpecker has a solid black back and tail and
a conspicuous red crest for which it is named (from the
Latin word for cap, pilleus). The female resembles the
male but does not have red cheek patches and has less
red in the crest. Flight is strong, with irregular wing
flapping accompanied by white flashing of wing undersurfaces. Foods include ants, beetles,
wood-boring larvae, and wild fruits. Pileated woodpeckers inhabit mature coniferous and
deciduous forests, valley woodlots, and remote mountain territory. They nest in a new hole
excavated each year in the same nest area, 15 - 70 feet up a tree (average 45 feet). The
entrance hole is usually oval, and the cavity is 10 - 24 inches deep. Females lay 3 or 4 eggs
which are incubated for 18 days. These birds are uncommon residents in all seasons. They
do not migrate but breed all over the eastern US and Canada. A pileated’s powerful beak
can break loose fist-size chunks of wood; the bird twists its head and beak as it strikes to
add leverage. Pileateds cut large rectangular holes in dead trees, spars, live conifers and
utility poles. They drum loudly and rapidly, then more slowly, trailing off softly at the end.
They call loudly with a wick-uh wick-uh wick-uh, in a series; also kuk, kuk, kuk, kuk-kuk-kuk.
• Fun facts:
The Pileated Woodpecker digs large rectangular holes in trees to find ants. These
excavations can be so broad and deep that they can cause small trees to break in
half.
• The Pileated Woodpecker prefers large trees for nesting. In young forests, it will use
any large trees remaining from before the forest was cut. Because these trees are
larger than the rest of the forest, they present a lightning hazard to the nesting birds.
12
White-Breasted Nuthatch
The white-breasted nuthatch has a slate-gray back,
white breast and face, and a cap that is black in the
male and ashy gray in the female. Nuthatches inhabit
deciduous forests throughout Pennsylvania and the
East. They climb around in trees, walking in a herky-
jerky manner up and down and around the trunks,
along branches, and the undersides of limbs. Both
males and females sound a nasal ank ank call. Pairs
live in home territories of 20 to 35 acres. White-breasted nuthatches feed on insects and
spiders in summer and on nuts and seeds in winter. They relish suet at feeding stations and
carry away sunflower seeds for caching. Sometimes they forage on the ground. Nuthatches
wedge acorns and hickory nuts into tree bark and then hammer the shells off with blows
from their awl-like beaks. During courtship, the male bows to the female, spreading his tail
and drooping his wings while swaying back and forth; he also feeds her morsels. Before
building the nest, the birds rub or sweep crushed insects back and forth over the inside and
outside of the nest cavity. Ornithologists speculate that this sweeping behavior leaves
chemical secretions behind that may repel predators or nest competitors. The female
builds a nest inside the cavity (commonly a rotted-out branch stub or an abandoned
squirrel or woodpecker hole) using twigs, bark fibers, grasses and hair. She lays 5 to 9
white, brown-spotted eggs and incubates them for 12 to 14 days while her mate brings her
food. Both parents feed insects and spiders to the young, which fledge after two or three
weeks, usually in June.
Fun facts:
• In winter, White-breasted Nuthatches join foraging flocks led by chickadees or
titmice, perhaps partly because it makes food easier to find and partly because more
birds can keep an eye out for predators. One study found that when titmice were
removed from a flock, nuthatches were more wary and less willing to visit exposed
bird feeders.
13
Ruffed Grouse
The Ruffed Grouse has been Pennsylvania’s official
state bird since 1931. Where mature forests
dominate the landscape, grouse, while present, are
limited. But wherever brushy conditions are found,
there’s a good possibility grouse can be found there,
too. Grouse are year-round PA residents and are
related to quail, turkeys, pheasants, and ptarmigan.
The ruffed grouse is found throughout much of the
northern part of our continent in areas of suitable habitat. Although its take-off is
thunderous and powerful, a grouse cannot fly long distances. Individuals rarely range more
than a few hundred yards a day; in fact, the same bird may be flushed from the same area
in the woods several days in a row. A grouse weighs about 1½ pounds, is 15½ to 19 inches
long, and has a wingspread of 22 to 25 inches. The plumage is rich brown sprinkled with
white and black above, and white with horizontal dark brown bars on the breast and
undersides. The tail is brown and has a wide, black band between two narrower grayish
bands. The name “ruffed” comes from a ruff of iridescent black feathers that almost
completely encircles the neck. Males have much more prominent ruffs, which can be
fluffed up for a courtship display. Grouse rarely — if ever — die of old age in the wild.
Juvenile mortality is great; most grouse die before they are a year old, and few live to be
two years of age. Grouse are shy birds and their range has shrunk where cities and towns
have expanded; they don’t readily adapt to civilization. In the summer, grouse eat many
types of food including protein-rich insects, blackberries, blueberries, and other wild fruits.
In fall, when insects are scarce, their diet is almost exclusively plant foods including small
acorns, beechnuts, cherries, barberries, wild grapes, apples, hawthorn and dogwood fruits,
and various buds and leaves. Buds form the basis of the grouse’s winter diet: aspen, birch,
beech, maple, cherry, and apple buds are favored. Ferns, green leaves, and other evergreen
foods are eaten until food becomes more plentiful in the spring. Grouse roost in conifers
and hardwoods and shelter under conifers during storms. They may spend winter nights
beneath the snow, sometimes flying directly into a soft snowbank at dusk. During winter, a
grouse’s feet develop snowshoe-like properties through the growth of a horny fringe
around the toes. During mating season — March and April — male grouse attract females
by drumming. With their tail fanned, the male stands on a large, prominent log or rock and
beats the air sharply with his wings. The rush of air created by his wingbeats sounds much
like drumming.
Fun Facts:
• In early fall, juvenile ruffed grouse may exhibit a strange period of restlessness
known as the “fall shuffle” or “crazy flight.” During this time, some young grouse take
off in apparently undirected flight, and a few are killed when they crash into trees,
14
fences, windows and the sides of buildings. The fall shuffle may serve to scatter
broods and expand or disperse the population.
• In much of their range, Ruffed Grouse populations go through 8-to-11-year cycles of
increasing and decreasing numbers. Their cycles can be attributed to the snowshoe
hare cycle. When hare populations are high, predator populations increase too.
When the hare numbers go down, the predators must find alternate prey and turn to
grouse, decreasing their numbers.
• The male Ruffed Grouse’s signature drumming display doesn’t involve drumming on
anything but air. As the bird quickly rotates its wings forward and backward, air
rushes in beneath the wings creating a miniature vacuum that generates a deep,
thumping sound wave that carries up to a quarter of a mile.
##################
