Blogging about a grouse, not grousing about a blog. Just to be clear.
Up in Casco — I looked up from the jigsaw puzzle of the Cape Hatteras lighthouse that we’ve almost finished (we started it last weekend but couldn’t finish it in one weekend) to see a bird running across the grass (OK, the snow over the grass) between the house and the woodpile. Much too big for a mourning dove, and too upright. Not big enough for a turkey. A ruffed grouse! We ran to the bedroom window and were able to see it walking off into the woods. I’ve seen one before, off one of the trails up the Great Blue Hill, when I used to walk there with Sajive Sarin on lunch hours from LTX, so that was basically 20 years ago. So it wasn’t a life bird, but a second view ever bird.
We (Arlene, Anne, Matt, and I) were out early this afternoon cutting more trail around the property. We got out to the left back corner, which Arlene and I had found our way to last weekend, and maybe fifty feet to the right from there, just about to where we had worked in from the other way around. Later in the afternoon we went out to walk around (from the other way) and were pleased that the trails pretty much connect. We need to define it better and cut it wider around the back, but you can walk all the way around now.