Spirit Guide of the Day is Grouse! Take some time to yourself with music and movement, shake out your body for spontaneous dance. Create a ceremony with lots of movement and drumming to honor the Spirit. Now is time to study the Sacred Spiral, exploring how it connects to your life and to higher levels of conscience. Your are coming into your own power and this focus on movement will bring the Spirit through you to help with this growth. During your dance or movement, focus on what goals you want to accomplish. A special location is important for meditation, drumming, and dancing. People who connect with Grouse are natural shamans, oftentimes quite independent and preferring time alone instead of around others. These individuals are protective parents, even protective of the children of others and are strongly connected to the natural life cycles. As they grow and mature, they become more familiar with concepts of other dimensions.

Grouse are a group of birds under the family Phasianidae, located throughout the Northern Hemisphere in habitats that range from moorland and pine forests to mountainside habitats. These birds are large and heavily built, weighing up to 14 pounds and standing as tall as 37 inches. The males of the species are larger than the females, possessing extravagant feathers and attributes for courtship. All Grouse have feathered nostrils, legs feathered to the toes, and/or small scales on the sides as adaptations for walking on snow or burrowing into it for shelter. Unlike others birds in their order such as chickens, they do not have spurs. Grouse are mainly herbivores, feeding on buds of plants, leaves, twigs, and other plant material which makes up over 95% of an adult Grouse diet. Chicks will eat invertebrates and insects, slowly adjusting to a vegetarian diet as they grow older. There are many species of forest-dwelling Grouse who even eat conifer needles, a plant most other animals will not eat. Grouse possess big crops, an expanded, muscular pouch near the throat that essentially an enlarged portion of the esophagus used to temporarily store food, and gizzards, a hind part of the stomach specially modified to grind food, and eat grit in order to digest food. The Prairie species of Grouse are slightly social types, while the Tundra species are the most social of all and form flocks of up to 100 in winter. The Forest Grouse species, however, are the most antisocial and flock only in autumn and winter. Grouse spend their time on the ground, only flying in certain instances such as when threatened where they will take of in a rush and glide for a long distance until they are safe. All male Grouse are polygamous, except for the Willow Ptarmigan. Male Grouse have elaborate courtship displays that normally take place at dawn and dusk, featuring brightly colored combs in some species and brightly colored inflatable sacs on the sides of their necks. A wide range of drumming, tail rattling, wing fluttering, and vocalizations are used in order to impress females. Female Grouse will lay about a week after mating, laying one egg every day or two up to five or twelve eggs. These eggs are laid in shallow depressions under cover with a lining of plant material. Chicks will immediately leave the nest upon hatching, developing feathers quickly in order to be ready for flight before they are two weeks old. The female Grouse will stay and protect the chicks until their first autumn when they reach their mature weights.