I am happy to report that I’m still able to sleep in the back of my car. I wasn’t about to miss my chance to study spruce grouse last week. It’s my favorite bird. Since I needed to be at the Telos checkpoint by dawn, the simplest thing was to head into the North Maine Woods the night before, fold down the back seat and wake up already on location.
The Maine forest has a secret, and a University of Maine study project is trying to unravel the mystery. The spruce grouse has a wide range throughout Canada that dips down into several northern states. For some reason, they are declining in the Northeast. It’s become scarce in New York. It’s an endangered species in Vermont. And it’s listed as a species of special concern in New Hampshire. Yet, it appears to be doing OK in Maine. There is something about our forest management that apparently suits these grouse, and we’d like to know what it is.
Joel Tebbenkam is the university graduate student leading the charge in the north woods. His team’s mission is to put radio collars on spruce grouse, and then visit them often enough to get a sense of how the birds use the forest. The mystery may have much to do with how timber is harvested in Maine, especially with such practices as pre-commercial thinning.
The spruce grouse is an enigmatic bird. It is similar to the ruffed grouse, Maine’s popular game bird, but it’s a specialist. It stays deep in the cover of thick spruce and fir, often in mossy, boggy areas of the North Woods and along the Down East coast. They can be hard to see in that habitat, so finding one is not easy.
The spruce grouse diet changes throughout the year. In winter, they subsist almost entirely on conifer needles. In summer, they relish berries, small succulent leaves and insects. The dietary change is so dramatic that their digestive systems change with the season. To accommodate the winter diet of tough needles, the gizzard actually grows by 75 percent and the digestive tract increases in length.
I went out with Joel at dawn. Our first mission was to re-capture a hen and replace the radio that was attached to her last year. Joel knew about where she should be, since the team had used telemetry earlier in the season to spot her on her nest. We went to the spot and used a few audio tricks, trying to get her to give away her location. As it happens, she was standing right next to us. She charged angrily out of the bushes, presumably in defense of her chicks. The expression “mad as a wet hen” comes to mind. She ran around our legs, giving Joel an easy chance to snag her with his capture stick, a simple device that works better than a net, because it seems to take the grouse by surprise every time.
The next hen was not so cooperative. We heard her clucking to her chicks, which gave away her location. She even popped up on a bush to look at us as we drew near. But she was wily. Invariably, threatened chicks fly into a tree. Once her chicks were safely above ground, momma grouse played cat and mouse with us for several minutes, never venturing far from her brood but never giving us a clear shot to capture her either. Joel tried to maneuver with the capture stick, but the hen stayed on branches screened by foliage, blocking his every attempt.
Sometimes, she’d run around in the underbrush. Sometimes she’d fly out of reach. Eventually, I managed to get around to her far side, nudging her in Joel’s direction. At last, she was trapped.
The grouse was quickly fitted with a radio collar and a leg band. She was weighed and measured. Then she was gently placed back into the shade and released. Good girl.
Our third grouse happened by accident. We were pursuing a male through a thick stand of spruce saplings when, suddenly, a female ran across our path directly ahead. She tried to slink by unnoticed, but we spotted a nearby chick fly to safety and knew she wouldn’t leave us. She was calmer than the last hen, and she was collared and banded quickly. The last time I saw her, she was back on her perch, glaring at us as we left. I guess we ruffled her feathers.
Bob Duchesne serves as vice president of Maine Audubon’s Penobscot Valley Chapter. He developed the Maine Birding Trail, with information at mainebirdingtrail.com. He can be reached at duchesne@midmaine.com.