200 AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY. 



HABITS. 



The writer of this article has had more opportunities for observing this 

 bird than perhaps any other observer. The period covered is more than 

 twenty years, and the number of specimens seen during that time would 

 probably reach into the hundreds. 



After a careful study of my notes, along with all the information I could 

 gain from the hunters who were intimately acquainted with the bird, I 

 have come to the conclusion that it differs but very little in its habits from 

 its Western relative, and the differences that there are, are caused by its 

 restricted environments. Its range covers all the barren portion of the 

 Island and it prefers the more open portions to the wooded ones, and sel- 

 dom takes to the woods unless driven there by inclement weather, lack of 

 food, or enemies. 



Its food in the summer time consists very largely of grasshoppers, 

 crickets, spiders and other insects. I have found few berries in the crops 

 of such as I have had the opportunity of examining, and my opportunities 

 have enabled me to make examinations at all seasons of the year. Later 

 in the season these are interspersed with wild cranberries and cranberry 

 leaves, of which they are very fond. And these, with the addition of 

 sorrel and clover, constitute practically all their food during the later 

 Autumn and Winter, except at such times as through heavv snowfalls or ex- 

 tremely stormv weather, thev are driven to the more sheltered portions of the 

 woods to find food, then they eat acorns. But I am satisfied they only eat 

 them when they cannot find other food. They roost on the plains in 

 small scrub oaks. 



Mr. Chas. E. BenJire, in his history on North American birds, states 

 the hethen is almost exclusively a woods bird, seldom coming into the 

 open except in early morning and evening. My experience has been that 

 at all times of the day, for every bird that I have seen in the woods there 

 were at least twenty-five out in the open. This bird used to be very 

 common on the Island. Old hunters have told me that they have seen as 

 many as two or three hundred birds in a flock. They have gradually 

 dwindled in numbers through being hunted very closely by native hunt- 

 ers, many ot the birds finding their way to the Boston and other markets, 

 but a great many more being used at home. 



I saw a bed tick filled with the feathers from this bird. In 1892-3 men 

 who had watched this bird closely on the Island, stated to me that they 

 had diminished in numbers in the previous five years to about one-quartej 

 what they were previously. In June, 1894, a fire swept over practically 

 all their breeding grounds, and in the Fall of that year I spent two weeks 

 going over their whole ground. We found many skeletons of the birds 

 that had been destroyed in this fire, and where the previous Fall we start- 



