Day 104: On my way out to the mailbox, I couldn't help but notice the feathers on the ground. Most were small, breast and belly fluff, but the trail terminated at the roadside with three tailfeathers. Somebody had met with an untimely demise, either from a car, the Red-Tailed Hawk which has been circling over the pasture, or from one of the coyotes who have been serenading in the wee hours for the last week or so. Given the distribution of the feathers, my money is on the Red-Tail. In any event, the bird itself was gone and had left me with a puzzle. It was time to break out the feather book ("Bird Feathers," by Scott and McFarland) to determine who had been the victim. I have to admit that at first I thought the feathers might actually have belonged to the Red-Tail, so that's where I looked first. Nope, not a match. We don't have a lot of big-bodied birds around here, and I knew it wasn't a Northern Flicker, so I checked owls. Still no match. The feather book is not complete, but it can usually put you in the ballpark, so I started paging through it from back to front. I was about to give up when I got to loons, but since I only had a few pages to go and the next one was Bobwhite, I kept flipping. Bingo! Ruffed Grouse! I suppose I should have thought of that since I see them occasionally in the yard. They're not the brightest crayons in the box, but it saddens me that this one came to a sorry end, but everybody has to eat.
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