192 THE BIRDS ABOUT Us. 



America from Labrador to Alaska." This bird and 

 the Rock Ptarmigan, which appears to be more a 

 dweller of the open country than the preceding, feed 

 on berries and other products of the scanty herbage 

 of the far north, and even eat lichens, which they find 

 by burrowing in the snow. 

 Nuttall states, 



" These birds search out their food chiefly in the morning and 

 evening, and in the middle of the day are observed sometimes to 

 bask in the sun. Like the Eskimo, . . . whose lot is cast in the 

 same cold and dreary region, they seek protection from the extreme 

 severity of the climate by dwelling in the snow ; it is here they com- 

 monly roost and work out subterraneous paths." 



These birds are not the only ones that work out 

 subnivean passages to reach their food. The late 

 Dr. Lockwood has given us an excellent account of 

 the manner in which the little snow-birds cleared 

 away the snow and got at the berries of poke-weed ; 

 and even used "their snow dug-out ... as a cozy 

 asylum from the cutting wind by day." 



The Prairie-chicken, or Pinnated Grouse, has been 

 too long and too well known to need further descrip- 

 tion. This is a bird of the prairies, and was supposed 

 to have been found all the way eastward to the At- 

 lantic coast, Nuttall speaking of their occurrence on 

 the grouse plains of New Jersey. These plains, or 

 the " barrens," are now innocent of anything like a 

 grouse; but on Martha's Vineyard the Heath-hen 

 is still living and, it is said, carefully preserved. It 

 is said to be a bird of open woods rather than open 

 country and to feed upon acorns. The heath-hen was 

 not uncommon in New Jersey in colonial days, and was 



