Ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus) are early-successional habitat specialists, where high densities of woody stems and herbaceous vegetation provide food and cover exist.
The ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus) is North America’s most widely distributed gallinaceous bird (Johnsgard 1973), with a geographic range extending from Alaska across central and southern Canada and the northern United States, and south into the central Rocky and Appalachian Mountains.
Ruffed grouse are common only where extensive forest tracts dominate the landscape and their distribution coincides closely with that of aspen forests (Populus tremuloides, P. grandidentata) except in the central and southern Appalachians and portions of the Central Hardwood Region where they occupy mixed-mesophytic and oak-hickory forests.
