RAISING AND MONITORING TAME RUFFED GROUSE (BONASA-UMBELLUS) FOR FIELDSTUDIES

Tame birds have been used for ecological field studies, but rarely are birds > 8 wk old used. To our knowledge, no previous study has succes sfully released and monitored tame ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus) > 1 4 wk old. We report here the techniques used to raise ruffed grouse fr om eggs collected in the wild and from pen-reared birds to obtain tame birds up to 1.5 yr old that were released and monitored in the wild. Birds were raised with either intensive imprinting (10-24 h/day of hum an contact) or nonintensive imprinting (< 2 h/day of human contact) du ring the 1st 7-8 wk after hatching. We released 10 ruffed grouse, one at a time, in southern Illinois during the winters of 1990 and 1991. T he first four birds released were killed by predators within 1 wk, but allowed us to modify our observation techniques to reduce the stress on released birds and maintain their tameness. Of the remaining six bi rds, five (four juvenile, one adult) were released in clearcuts in the Shawnee National Forest, Union County, Illinois, and successfully mon itored from February to April 1990 and November 1990 to March 1991. We were equally successful in releasing and observing ruffed grouse that were intensively and nonintensively imprinted, suggesting that long h ours of contact with young birds are not necessary to obtain observabl e birds in the wild. Time-activity budgets, habitat use and forage sel ection of the tame birds were also similar to those reported for wild ruffed grouse. We believe that the use of tame birds is a feasible met hod for collecting data on ruffed grouse ecology and may be used to ev aluate forage and habitat quality where introductions are proposed or to be evaluated.