{"id":15544,"date":"2026-08-26T04:31:23","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T11:31:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/?p=15544"},"modified":"2026-08-26T04:31:23","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T11:31:23","slug":"ruffed-grouse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/2026\/08\/ruffed-grouse\/","title":{"rendered":"Ruffed grouse?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I went for a bike ride yesterday and saw some sights in the neighborhood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first I thought these little ground-hugging birds were young turkeys. But 1) no \u201cadults\u201d around 2) not a big flock 3) a different stripe pattern in their feathers and especially 4) that little crest on top of their heads convinced me they\u2019re not turkeys. My phone camera identifies this as a ruffed grouse. Rarely seen, but yesterday I saw them twice. The photo is very cropped, they don\u2019t like attention!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A ruffed grouse?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I went to one of the abandoned houses I like to check on. I wish I was brave enough to go inside, but I\u2019m not. I noticed this abandoned picnic table out front. Because of Grace at windthread<\/a>, I had serious thoughts about how I could steal the table. It looks like it\u2019s in pretty good shape and it would be useful in my yard. But I won\u2019t do it. It belongs here in the ruin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Old picnic table, abandoned <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This beautiful old apple tree is in the yard there. Very few apples on it this year. I love its shape. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Apple tree, abandoned <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I went for a bike ride yesterday and saw some sights in the neighborhood. At first I thought these little ground-hugging birds were young turkeys. But 1) no \u201cadults\u201d around 2) not a big...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15541,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[472,485,384],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-houses","category-trees"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/img_0997.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15544"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15545,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15544\/revisions\/15545"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}