May 12: Ruffed Grouse
"Everybody knows that the autumn landscape in the northwoods is the land, plus a red maple, plus a ruffled grouse. In terms of conventional physics, the grouse represents only a millionth of either the mass or the energy of an acre. Yet, subtract the grouse and the whole thing is dead."
--Aldo Leopold, from SAND COUNTY ALMANAC
Spring landscape--
male grouse drumming
its heartbeat.