Grouse - Feeding and Habits

Feeding and Habits

These birds feed mainly on vegetation—buds, catkins, leaves, and twigs—which typically accounts for over 95 percent of adults' food by weight. Thus their diet varies greatly with the seasons. Hatchlings eat mostly insects and other invertebrates, gradually reducing their proportion of animal food to adult levels. Several of the forest-living species are notable for eating large quantities of conifer needles, which most other vertebrates refuse. To digest vegetable food, grouse have big crops and gizzards, eat grit to break up food, and have long intestines with well-developed caeca in which symbiotic bacteria digest cellulose.

Forest species flock only in autumn and winter, though individuals tolerate each other when they meet. Prairie species are more social, and tundra species (ptarmigans, Lagopus) are the most social, forming flocks of up to 100 in winter. All grouse spend most of their time on the ground, though when alarmed, they may take off in a flurry and go into a long glide.

Most species stay within their breeding range all year, but make short seasonal movements; many individuals of the Ptarmigan (called Rock Ptarmigan in America) and Willow Grouse (called Willow Ptarmigan in America) migrate hundreds of kilometers.