About an hour before sunset the day after Christmas a Ruffed Grouse appeared in our Etna yard. We see them from time to time along our driveway, but this is the first that I have seen one so close to our house.
The photo below is the first photo I took of the grouse in a tangle of ice branches. It is completely uncropped.
The grouse flew a short distance to another tangle of branches.
I watched it for 20 more minutes as it moved into even less photographic locations. It seemed to be eating buds of the deciduous trees. Finally I decided to make an “end-run” and loop far around hoping for a cleaner photo. This also allowed me to put my back to the quickly disappearing sun. That was when I got the photo below and the one at the top of this page.
