Prairie Chickens 175 



A. E. Doolittle, superintendent of the Peninsular State Park in Door County, 

 saw 300 chickens (pinnated) all in one flock, fly over his house in spring, headed 

 northeast up the shore of Green Bay. These birds were less than a gunshot high, 

 and must have been en route for Michigan. There is no chicken range near his 

 house. 



Early Fall Flights. The Missouri flights described by Widmann had, he 

 says, diminished greatly by 1884, due, I presume, to the reduction of Iowa breed- 

 ing ranges, but had not entirely ceased even in 1901. Widmann specifically says 

 they occurred in November and December. 



Late summer or early fall flights also seem to have taken place. Thus 

 Andrew Brooks, a very reliable observer, who trains dogs in the vicinity of 

 Doniphan, Ripley County, Missouri, saw a flock of 20 prairie chickens on his farm 

 in the Ozarks in the early fall of 1901. There is, and was, no chicken country 

 nearer than two counties distant; hence the flock was certainly going somewhere. 

 He believes the month was October, and says that it was during a drouth. Chart 

 2 shows that 1901 was an extra dry year, so that his dating is probably correct. 

 Mr. Brooks says further that Ozark Ripley was with him when he saw this flock, 

 and that after being seen once it immediately disappeared. The early fall date is 

 puzzling. It certainly cannot represent winter migration. 



In Illinois another early fall flight, of much larger proportions, was de- 

 scribed to me by Arthur Hamilton, guide and pusher in the Beardstown ducking 

 area on the Illinois River. This occurred about 1908, while he was a boy on his 

 father's farm near Elmwood, in west Peoria County. The date, he says, is correct 

 within a year or two, and the month was August, as shown from his recollection 

 of roasting ears being about ready. Hamilton says this flight was headed south- 

 ward and started in the forenoon, lasting for about an hour. "The sky was full 

 of chickens like blackbirds." They were not flying very high, as many of them 

 hit telephone wires. None were seen to alight. The flight must have covered a 

 considerable front, since Hamilton heard it discussed in Yates City and Oak Hill, 

 several miles away. These birds were said to have come back during the same 

 year, but not in any big or continuous flight. Luke Hurff, the local game warden 

 at that time, told Hamilton he thought the reason for the flight was that the 

 chickens were after some kind of insect which was abundant in the direction in 

 which they were headed. 



These early fall movements may have represented shifts to take advantage of 

 some special food. Both fall within one year of cyclic lows. Could impending 

 mortality induce extraordinary movement? It is clear that population pressure 

 could, but there were hardly enough chickens left in either Illinois or Missouri 

 after 1900 to produce anything but local pressure. Possibly these movements 

 arose from some sense of disharmony with the environment, as postulated by 

 Elton (1930). 



Radius of Mobility. All of this evidence points toward a former maxi- 

 mum annual mobility of several hundred miles in prairie chickens, and to seasonal 



