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| Gray Morph |
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| Head shaking |
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| Running |
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| Red Morph |
ORDER: Galliforms
FAMILY: Tetraonidae
Tetraonidae include Grouse and Ptarmigan and goes back to the Miocene Epoch.
They are ground nesters and lay between 6 and 15 eggs.
SPECIES: Bonasa umbellus
If you have the Reader's Digest book Birds of Canada you will note on page 186 that they put the FAMILY as Phasianidae which includes Quails and Pheasants . Phasianidae lack neck sacs.
Phasianidae goes back to the Oligocene which is previous to the Miocene. The Miocene saw the increase in grasslands with drier colder climate. The confusion comes from the inclusion of the European Partridge in the Quails and Pheasants list.
Time-wise you are looking at the Miocene Epoch stretching 23.8 to 5.3 million years ago... that takes in the Proconsul primate from 23 to 15 million years ago. Homo erectus (upright man) comes in at 1.8 million years ago.
Rick Potts has a theory, " hominids evolved when they were challenged to adapt to highly variable, unstable, inconsistent environments." (He is a Smithsonian Institution paleoanthropologist)
What you see in the mirror today is not what you would have seen those millions of years ago.
What would a Ruffed Grouse have looked like?
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