The grouse held fast even when the bike was rolled back and forth in frail attempts to dislodge it.īeing a veterinarian, I mentally began to formulate a list of differential diagnoses that might explain this strange, yet amazing behavior. My sons had surged well ahead of my wife and I, and eventually they stopped along a wooded segment of the trail to rehydrate.Īs they awaited us, a ruffed grouse emerged from the entanglement, evaluated them and promptly roosted on one of their front tires. For the past two years, it would fly over my shoulder, knocking my hat off, landed on my shoulder, landed on the rack of my four-wheeler and ate wild bird seed from my hand multiple times with each visit.įinally, a long-awaited revelation when I read Tom Prijic’s encounter with the flirty ruffed grouse while at his Amherst Junction deer stand! On a gorgeous fall day in 1992, my family and I were biking on the Root River Trail in southern Minnesota. It joined me each season when I began tapping trees and grew more fearless with each encounter. From its behavior, it could only be the same bird year after year.
For the past three spring maple syrup seasons, I have been greeted and accompanied from tree to tree by “my” grouse. I read with great interest the story about the friendly grouse in the Fall issue. Slowly, we were able to get him to trust us, sit on our hand, and the rest is history. Our uncommon friendship started when Nerd Bird followed us because of his, we assumed, attraction to the sound of our four-wheeler as we drove past him, almost the same sound the ruffed grouse makes. We named him “Nerd Bird.” He even sat on my husband Kerry’s lap when he was on the tractor planting. I was reminded of the ruffed grouse that befriended us the spring and summer of 2015. I was reading your article about a man who was hunting and was surprised a ruffled grouse came and sat with him.
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