XVII 



THE PRAIRIE CHICKEN 



JUST below our garden was a five acre meadow which 

 sloped gently south and southwest. It was protected 

 on the north and northwest by our buildings and the grove 

 beyond, and naturally in the winter the snow melted off 

 there when it was still abundant in most places. It was 

 a fertile meadow containing about an even mixture of 

 clover and timothy and remained green through the win- 

 ter. While the same thing doubtless occurred at times 

 every winter, I especially remember the winter I was 

 eight years old that some spots in this meadow were bare 

 nearly all of the time, though there was much snow over the 

 country in general. This became a favorite feeding place 

 for many birds. In fact, it was the one spot that kept hun- 

 dreds of birds from going hungry or perhaps from starving 

 that winter. While other birds came to this meadow by 

 twos and threes at various times in the day, along about 

 ten o'clock in the morning, prairie chickens usually began 

 to arrive in flocks of from a dozen to several hundred. 

 Often one could count as many as five or six hundred 

 prairie chickens feeding there. 



As many of my readers have never seen prairie chickens, 

 I wish to say that this bird is a scratcher. It belongs to 

 the grouse branch of the family and in size is about as 



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