208 BULLETIN 50, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



pointed feathers; dark buffy brown bars on underparts broad averaging 

 about 5 mm. (coastal plain from New England and Long Island to Potomac 



River ; now extinct) Tympanuchus cupido cupido (p. 208) 



bb. Scapulars without conspicuous buffy whitish terminal spots; pinnae of male 



composed of more than 10 elongate feathers with nearly truncated tips ; 



dark bars on underparts narrower — averaging about 2.5 mm. 



c. Tarsi feathered to base of toes, without an exposed bare strip on posterior 



side except in summer (central Alberta to Manitoba and south to 



Colorado, northeastern Texas, Arkansas, and Indiana, and probably 



originally to Kentucky) Tympanuchus cupido pinnatus (p. 212) 



cc. Tarsi with lower portion in front and a wide strip on posterior side always 

 bare (coast region of Texas and southwestern Louisiana). 



Tympanuchus cupido attwateri (p. 217) 

 aa. Darker bars of back and rump divided, containing a continuous brown bar 

 enclosed between two narrower blackish ones; feathers of breast with four 

 to six alternate bars of brown and white ; darker bars of sides and flanks 

 bicolored, the broader light brown bar being enclosed between two narrower 

 dusky ones (Great Plains from Kansas to New Mexico and west-central 

 Texas) Tympanuchus pallidicintus (p. 219) 



TYMPANUCHUS CUPIDO CUPIDO (Linnaeus) 



Heath Hen 



Adult male. — Forehead Brussels brown ; feathers of the median portion 

 of the crown black with concealed cinnamon-rufous patches and tipped 

 with pale ochraceous-tawny ; feathers of sides of the crown and of the 

 whole occiput and hindneck pale ochraceous-tawny banded with dusky 

 clove brown'^ ; interscapulars broadly banded clove brown and pale ochra- 

 ceous-tawny to ochraceous-buff ; back, lower back, rump, and upper tail 

 coverts similar but with the pale terminal bands more yellowish — pale 

 tawny-olive to yellow-ocher ; scapulars and inner secondaries like the 

 interscapulars but with large terminal spots of buffy white; upper wing 

 coverts and outer secondaries olive-brown to pale clove brown banded and 

 tipped with buffy white, the pale bands more widely spaced on the outer 

 coverts than on the inner ones ; primaries olive-brown to pale clove brown 

 with buffy-white spots on the outer webs only; rectrices olive-brown to 

 pale clove brown narrowly tipped with whitish, the median ones with 

 some irregular pale cinnamomeous markings ; lores, upper throat, and 

 lower cheeks light warm buff; feathers of sides of neck and lower throat 

 cinnamon-rufous incompletely crossed by blackish lines and with elongated 

 terminal shaft streaks or spots of light warm buff; elongated pinnae with 

 five or six wholly black feathers and four or five that have broad pale 

 warm-buff stripes occupying most of the inner, dorsal web, the inner 

 webs of these feathers narrowly edged with cinnamon and sometimes 

 irregularly toothed with blackish-brown diagonal marks ; malar stripe and 



' In no specimen examined have I seen anything comparable to the description 

 taken from living birds by Gross (Mem. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., vi, 1928, 563), who 

 found the tips of these feathers to be white. 



