Ruffed Grouse can be a very challenging bird to find. First of all, their preferred habitat includes mature woodlands that are often quite inaccessible. And even if you can get into their best locales, they often are real skulkers. But not to worry – in Spring they can often be heard drumming. Though that is a challenge for me as I have problems hearing those low frequency sounds (even though my high-pitched hearing is still quite good). Plus a final complication – Ruffed Grouse numbers have dropped significantly over a major portion of their range. But despite these difficulties, sometimes you can get lucky and find one out in the open, even being quite tame.
The mountains of western NC provide excellent habitat for Ruffed Grouse. As a result, I’ve been receiving a fair number of eBird Needs Alerts with Grouse sightings. Few are likely chaseable, so I just treat them as reminders of a future target down the road. But then came a Needs Alert on March 13 of a sighting by local birder Vicky Burke. I reached out to her and got a specific location – along the Blue Ridge Parkway on a the trail heading northeast from the Mills River Overlook. And more importantly, she has twice recently seen one in that same location. Could this one be chaseable? I decided to give it a go. Besides, I haven’t done any birding along the Parkway yet, so this would be an opportunity for me to do some scouting in this area.
I was out of the house at dawn the next morning and after a short drive I was heading south along the Blue Ridge Parkway. As I climbed in elevation I got into areas of very thick fog, so as I got to the Mills River Overlook visibility was next to zero – no nice scenery views this morning. I quickly found the trail suggested by Vicky and was soon taking a slow walk through some really nice habitat. I spent more than a 90 minutes on this 1-mile trail but with no luck on the Grouse. Birding was a bit slow at this elevation, but I enjoyed multiple Winter Wrens and singing Juncos. Plus it was a great walk even though I struck out on my target bird.
It was still early so I decided to check out some more of the Parkway. A bit farther south I came to the Mt. Pisgah Campground where there were a few reports of Red Crossbills in previous years - another of my higher elevation targets. There were no eBird reports from the campground yet this year, so no recent news on Crossbills. So I figured it could be worth a search. Plus, again it would be a nice scouting effort. The campground wasn’t open yet this early in the year, so I parked safely nearby and decided to take a slow walk through the campground.
It was great habitat in the campground, with numerous singing Juncos. Were they already singing on territory? There were also many calling Golden-crowned Kinglets, along with several in full song. And Robins were everywhere. I especially spent a fair amount of birding time focused on the mature conifers around the campground, hoping to hear or see Crossbills. But even though they were loaded with cones, no Crossbills were around.
After walking around the two western campground loops I was pretty much seeing more of the same. So I debated about whether I should walk around the eastern loop as well, but decided I ought to head there especially for more opportunities at Crossbills. As I turned onto that last loop I spotted some movement on the pavement up ahead. And just as I got my binocs focused on that spot I heard and saw a whirr of wings – it was a pair of Ruffed Grouse that took off into the woods as they spotted me. I quickly headed to the edge of the woods where they had disappeared, and could hear some rustling in the leaves, but never got any more visuals on the birds. Boy was I lucky. I didn’t find the potentially chaseable Grouse but found 2 other more cooperative birds nearby. Though I never did find any Crossbills - they could wait for a future trip along the Parkway.
My statebird map for Ruffed Grouse is inserted below. States highlighted in blue are those where I’ve seen this species; cross-hatched states are those where it is regular though I've yet to see them. As I said at the beginning of this post, Ruffed Grouse has been a tough bird for me - I still need it in many states across the country.
Ruffed Grouse was number 288 for my NC statelist. And what a great introduction to birding along the Blue Ridge Parkway!
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