410 THE PRAIBIE CHICKEN, OR SHARPTAILED GROUSE, 
“the chickens are going into the bush,” 7. ¢., leaving the open timber 
and going into the dense fir coverts, the hearers make ready for a 
severe storm. 
Like most of the grouse family, this in winter spends the night in 
a snow-drift. Out on the plains the wind has pounded the snow into 
drifts of ice-like hardness, but in the bush it continues soft (this. 
very softness affords another security to the chickens, through its 
causing the wolves and foxes to quit the bush for the winter though 
they live there by preference the rest of the year.) In the evening 
the chickens fly down either headlong into a drift, or run a little 
then dive. Each makes his own hole. They generally go down six 
inches or so, and then along about a foot. By morning their breath 
has formed a solid wall in front of them, so they invariably go out: 
at one side. In Ontario, the non-conductive power of snow is not as: 
likely to be manifested as here, so to illustrate: For weeks, the 
thermometer being at 20 below zero F.) six inches of snow on one- 
quarter inch of ice kept the water beneath above 32° F. Without 
the snow the same ice increased in a day to a thickness of two 
inches. Likewise, under 10 inches of snow the ground continued 
unfrozen after the thermometer had for a month ranged from zero to 
40 below. Thus we can readily understand that under six inches of 
snow and one inch of feathers the chickens do not mind even 50 
below zero. The great disadvantage of the snowbed is that they are 
so liable to become the prey of foxes, etc., whose sagacious nostrils 
indicate the very spot beneath which the bird is sleeping I am 
almost inclined to think that this is the only way in which a fox has 
a chance of securing an old chicken, so wary are they at all times. 
As the winter wanes it is not uncommon for the land to be visited 
by a fall of snowy sleet ; this drives the chickens at once into the 
snow drifts, and as the sleet freezes it imprisons them and in this 
way very many perish. In the spring the melting snows leave them 
exposed, but they are now little else than bones and feathers. There 
is little else to note about the bush or winter half of their lives. By 
spring, many of them, by continually pulling off frozen browse, have 
so worn their bills that, when closed, there is a large opening right 
through near the end. As the winter wanes, with their numbers 
considerably reduced, but with the fittest ones surviving they once 
more spread over the prairies, at first, in flocks, but soon to scatter 
and enter on their duties of reproduction. 
