218 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 
berry, huckleberry, dwarf sumac and other low-grow- 
ing shrubs. 
“Clear, rapid trout brooks wind their way to the 
sea through open meadows, or long, narrow swamps, 
wooded with red maples, black alders, high huckleberry 
bushes, andromeda and poison dogwood, and overrun 
with tangled skeins of green briars. 
“At all seasons the heath hens live almost exclusively 
in the oak woods, where the acorns furnish them abun- 
dant food, although, like our ruffed grouse, they occa- 
sionally at early morning and just after sunset ven- 
ture out a little way in the open to pick up scattered 
grains of corn or to pluck a few clover leaves, of which 
they are extremely fond. They also wander to some 
extent over the scrub-oak plains, especially when blue- 
berries are ripe and abundant. In winter, during long- 
continued snows, they sometimes approach buildings, 
to feed upon the grain which the farmers throw out to 
them. A man living near West Tisbury told me that 
last winter a flock visited his barn at about the same 
hour each day. One cold, snowy morning he counted 
sixteen perched in a row on the top rail of a fence 
near the barnyard. It is unusual to see so many to- 
gether now, the number in a covey rarely exceeding six 
or eight, but in former times packs containing from 
one to two hundred birds each were occasionally met 
with late in the autumn. 
“Only one person of the many whom I questioned 
on the subject had ever seen a heath hen’s nest. It was 
in oak woods, among sprouts at the base of a large 
