192 Tue Birps Asour Us. 
America from Labrador to Alaska.” This bird and 
the Rock Ptarmigan, which appears to be more a 
dweller of the open country than the preceding, feed 
on berries and other products of the scanty herbage 
of the far north, and even eat lichens, which they find 
by burrowing in the snow. 
Nuttall states,— 
“ These birds search out their food chiefly in the morning and 
evening, and in the middle of the day are observed sometimes to 
bask in the sun. Like the Eskimo, . . . whose lot is cast in the 
same cold and dreary region, they seek protection from the extreme 
severity of the climate by dwelling in the snow; it is here they com- 
monly roost and work out subterraneous paths.” 
These birds are not the only ones that work out 
subnivean passages to reach their food. The late 
Dr. Lockwood has given us an excellent account of 
the manner in which the little snow-birds cleared 
away the snow and got at the berries of poke-weed ; 
and even used “their snow dug-out .. . as a cozy 
asylum from the cutting wind by day.” 
The Prairie-chicken, or Pinnated Grouse, has been 
too long and too well known to need further descrip- 
tion. This isa bird of the prairies, and was supposed 
to have been found all the way eastward to the At- 
lantic coast, Nuttall speaking of their occurrence on 
the grouse plains of New Jersey. These plains, or 
the “ barrens,” are now innocent of anything like a 
grouse; but on Martha’s Vineyard the Heath-hen 
is still living and, it is said, carefully preserved. It 
is said to be a bird of open woods rather than open 
country and to feed upon acorns. The heath-hen was 
not uncommon in New Jersey in colonial days, and was 
