236 DAVENPORT ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



Genus Pediocetes Baird. 



130. (308b). Pedioccctcs p/iasiane/lns cattipfsfris Ridgw. Prairie 

 Sharp-tailed Grouse. 

 The Prairie Sharp-tailed Grouse, the "Pintail Chicken" of the 

 Northwest, east of the Rocky Mountains, is probably extinct in 

 Iowa, although it was undoubtedly found in the state formerly. 

 Thomas Say mentions its occurrence at P^ngineers' Cantonment 

 in 1819-20 (Long's P^xp., i, 265). John Krider says: "I found 

 this bird in Iowa and Minnesota, where it breeds" (Forty Years' 

 Notes, 1879, 56), and "very common at Lake Mills, Iowa" {Forest 

 and Stream, i, 15, 1873, 233). "They were recorded as rare resi- 

 dents at Grinnell, Iowa" (Cooke, Bird Migr. in Miss. Val., 1884- 

 85, 106-7). Keyes and Williams give it as "common on the 

 prairies of northwestern Iowa" (Bds. of Iowa, 18S9, 125). F. V. 

 Hayden says: "This bird is seldom seen below Council Bluffs. 

 P'rom thence to the mountains it is ver}' abundant" (Trans. Am. 

 Philos. Soc, xii, 1863, 172). Dr. Coues, tracing the habitat of 

 the Sharp-tailed Grouse, in 1874 (Birds of the Northwest, page 

 407), says : 



"The latter inhabits the western portions of Minnesota and 

 Iowa, all of Dakota, thence diagonally across Nebraska and Kan- 

 sas to Colorado. ... Its southwest trend is confirmed b}^ Mr. 

 Trippe, who believes that the Sharp-tailed scarcely* comes to 

 Iowa. (*But I am reliabl}- informed of its occurrence, with Cup- 

 idonia, in northwestern portions of Iowa); and more particularly 

 by my own observations, between P'ort Randall and Yankton. 

 . . . The Cupidones are unquestionably creeping up the Missouri 

 just as the Quail have done, although they have not, apparently, 

 as yet progressed quite so far; and with their advancement, the 

 Sharp-tailed are probably receding along this line as elsewhere." 



This westward extension of the limits of the Pinnated Grouse 

 and simultaneous recession of the Sharp-tailed species is still 

 going on. In 1899, in North Dakota, I found the limits of the 

 two species overlapping in Nelson county, in about the region of 

 Stump Lake. Mr. Alf. Eastgate, a resident collector of many 

 years' experience, informed me that the Prairie Sharp-tailed 

 Grouse were rapidly disappearing from that region as the Pin- 

 nated Grouse moved w^estward. 



G. H. Berry writes: "The only birds I ever saw in Iowa were 

 in Winneshiek county, in 1889, when I shot two birds out of 



