BirdWatching: Spruce Grouse an endangered species

By MICHAEL VIRTANEN
Associated Press Writer

TUPPER LAKE, N.Y. -- Hunting for the few remaining spruce grouse in the Adirondacks is like looking for a needle eater in a boreal forest.

Among thick stands of black spruce trees, heavy undergrowth and marshy terrain in the Nature Conservancy's 4,200-acre Spring Pond Bog Preserve, it's much easier on a summer morning when the bird wears a radio collar."

She took off with the chicks," field researcher Angelina Ross said of the female she'd seen weeks earlier on a nest with five eggs. "We'll get the male pretty quick."

In a study funded by state wildlife grants, Ross since 2002 has collared 16 spruce grouse, listed as endangered species in New York. The graduate student at the State University College of Environmental Science and Forestry had a Global Positioning System locator and coordinates of the nest from the last visit."

There isn't much more than 100 to 150 spruce grouse in the Adirondacks," said Glenn Johnson, who accompanied her. He and other biologists are considering ways to restore their numbers, possibly by importing birds from Ontario or Maine."

Nobody's done this sort of work for the spruce grouse, so anything we do is kind of experimental," said John Ozard, wildlife biologist for the state Department of Environmental Conservation. About 90 percent of those left in the Adirondacks are on privately owned land, he said. "The shrinkage of the range has been happening at least since the turn of the century and probably since the 1850s."

...bird watching isn't for the meek...