We’ve had more Ruffed Grouse activity in the yard this winter than usual. It’s been fun to watch them, and to keep them returning Rose put some sunflower seeds out on the floor of the deck. They appreciate it. Yesterday I watched one slowly amble across the snow in the back yard, gingerly stepping and often breaking through. It did not look fun—basically postholing, which when I have to do it is exhausting. Oddly, when it came across a fallen aspen leaf, brown and ugly at this time of year, it picked it up and swallowed it down. That was a surprise; we see them eat tree buds a lot, but this looked like almost the lowest quality food one could find (one step above spruce needles).

As the grouse slowly approached the edge of the woods, the red squirrel who lives over there went batshit crazy.

The squirrel raced up and down and back and forth among the small spruce trees, madly shaking its tail and chittering like a tree-rat catastrophe was crashing down on the whole world. In short, it acted like an insane creature of Satan.

Ruffed Grouse in the back yard

As far as I could tell, the grouse ignored the squirrel completely, perhaps contributing to the latter’s frenzied acrobatics. The squirrel gradually concentrated its activity where the grouse would enter the woods. Then it climbed to the bottom of a spruce and stepped out onto the ground in front of the grouse. Everybody paused. You could almost hear the Ennio Morricone music. Emboldened, the squirrel charged. The grouse just puffed out its feathers and bowed down. And the little spawn of Satan turned around in terror and ran, up the tree and away. Score one for the good team.