HEATH HEST 273 



The females gave frequent calls and notes when attending their 

 young. If the mother bird was suddenly surprised she gave a char- 

 acteristic sharp call signal for her young to scatter and hide. If the 

 members of the brood were very young and unable to fly, she feigned 

 a wounded bird and cried out as if in great distress as she fluttered 

 along the ground. If the young were older she usually sailed out 

 over the scrub oaks and uttered a loud cackling call, which appar- 

 ently was also for the purpose of attracting attention away from the 

 young. 



Nesting. — The nest of the heath hen was built upon the ground 

 and was usually composed of leaves, grasses, and twigs already in 

 place, to which were added materials found near the nesting site. 

 The nests were concealed by the low dense vegetation of the scrub- 

 oak plains. Indeed they were so well hidden from view and the eggs 

 so well covered when the bird was away that few of the nests were 

 ever found, in spite of the great efforts various observers have ex- 

 pended to locate them. 



William Brewster (1890) states: " Only one person of the many I 

 have questioned on the subject has ever found a heath hen's nest. 

 It was in oak woods among sprouts at the base of a large stump and 

 contained either 12 or 13 eggs." There was a set of six eggs in the 

 Brewster collection that were found in a nest in the woods near Gay 

 Head on July 24, 1885. This set was described and one egg was 

 figured by Capen (1886). One of the eggs given to the United 

 States National Museum is figured by Bendire (1892, pi. 3, fig. 2). 

 Bendire stated that the six eggs referred to above were the only eggs 

 in any collection known to him. 



In 1906, E. B. McCarta found a nest and nine eggs in a low but 

 dense growth of scrub oak near the central part of Marthas Vine- 

 yard Island. Dr. George W. Field photographed the nest on June 

 2, and two days later the eggs were placed under a bantam hen. One 

 of the eggs hatched on June 20, but unfortunately the chick was 

 killed by the hen, and the other eggs failed to hatch. This set of 

 eggs with the chick is now a part of a display group in the American 

 Museum of Natural History, New York. On June 5, 1912, Deputy 

 Warden Leonard, after a most prolonged and diligent search, found 

 a nest and four eggs covered with leaves in a slight hollow sur- 

 rounded by a dense mass of sweet ferns growing among the scrub 

 oaks. The oaks in the vicinity were 2 or 3 feet in height. When the 

 nest was visited on June 12 the bird was incubating. On June 21, 

 Doctor Field was able to determine that there were eight eggs, and a 

 week later he took an excellent series of photographs of the bird on 

 the nest. The bird sat so closely on the eggs that it was dislodged 

 only by active effort. Deputy Leonard had no difficulty in approach- 



