On August 27, 1832, near Dennysville, Maine, John James Audubon and his sons, Victor Gifford and John Woodhouse, followed Thomas Lincoln (see Plate 142) into the “Hackmetack Woods” in search of the Spotted grouse. The bird maintains its advantage by its ability to thrive in such forbidding places as the dense spruce forests of northern Maine. “The whole ground is covered by the most beautiful carpeting of verdant moss, over which the light-footed Grouse walk with ease, but among which we sunk at every step or two up to the waist, our legs stuck in the mire, and our bodies squeezed between the dead trunks and branches of the trees, the minute leaves of which insinuated themselves among my clothes, and nearly blinding me.” If the ground and mire were not treacherous enough, there were the “musquitoes and moose flies” that had to be swiped at and fought off.
When Audubon later explored “the British provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Labrador,” the Spotted Grouse became much more visible and numerous. For the later octavo edition of Birds of America, Audubon re-named the Spotted Grouse the Canada Grouse to reflect better its range and botanical name: Tetrao canadensis. Today the Canada Grouse is known as the Spruce grouse (Canachites canadensis). Since the Spruce grouse is so partial to spruce needles and other pine needles in the forests of northern Maine, Canada, and Alaska for foraging and for nesting material, it has fared better than most against the ravages of hunters and loss of habitat.