Grouse Sounds

For years I thought one of my distant neighbors had a faulty chain saw that would die after firing a few times. John Collette in a letter to the editor of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner described the sound as that of a big diesel generator starting up, then stopping and also as that of a giant kid dropping two-foot marbles onto a concrete surface. Yet another description is that the sound is similar to a motorcycle engine starting, coming up to speed and then dying.

The male ruffed grouse produces this sound as part of a courtship ritual by beating the air with his wings. This drumming noise is composed of sound waves of such low frequency--about 40 cycles per second--that many of the grouses' predators are unable to hear it.

The ruffed grouse struts and drums during courtship in the deciduous forests where he lives, According to University of Alaska ornithologist Brina Kessel, the spruce grouse, which lives in coniferous forests, courts by strutting, jumping and clucking. Another relative, the sharptailed grouse of the open country, courts by "dancing, clucking and cooing." Seems to me the ruffed grouse puts on the best show, but obviously some female grouse prefer cluckers and dancers to drummers.