PRAIRIE hen; prairie chicken; pinnated grouse. 147 



When these skins are jjunctured, they are no longer reso- 

 nant. The late Mr. David Eckby, of Boston, furnished 

 Mr. Audubon with a full account of their habits, as observed 

 by him in Martha's Vineyard, and also on the Island of 

 Nashawena, where they were then kept in a preserve. 

 They were observed never to settle down where the woods 

 were thick or the bushes tangled, but invariably in the 

 open spaces; and as they never start up from the thick 

 foliage, but always seek to disengage themselves from all 

 embarrassment in their flight by reaching the nearest open 

 space, they offer to the sportsman a very fair mark. The 

 sound they utter in rising, when hard pressed, is said to re- 

 semble the syllables coo-coo-coo. They were observed to 

 feed on the berries of the barberry, which abound on those 

 islands, boxberries, cranberries, the buds of roses, pines, 

 and alders, and on the nuts of the post oaks, and in the 

 Summer upon the more esculent berries. At the West they 

 frcquentl}^ feed on the seeds of the sumach. They are also 

 very destructive to the buds of the apple, and are very 

 fond of the fruit of the fox grape and the leaves and ber- 

 ries of the mistletoe. During the planting-season their 

 visits to the wheat and corn-fields are often productive of 

 great damage. Three eggti in my collection, taken from a 

 nest near Osage Village, in Indian Territory, which con- 

 tained sixteen eggs, measure, one 1,65, by 1,20 inches; 

 another 1,63 by 1,28; and the third 1,75 by 1,28 inches. 

 The}^ are of a rounded-oval shape, more obtuse at one end 

 than the other, and of a uniform color, which varies from 

 a light clay-color to a dark tawny-brown. The eggs are 

 sometimes, but not always, minutely spi'inkled with brown. 

 — Vol. III., Baird, Brewer and Ridgivay. 



