208 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 



the cheeks marked with brownish spots. A dark- 

 brown stripe runs from the corner of the mouth under 

 the eye and across the ear, and above this is a stripe 

 of buff. The black tufts of feathers on the side of 

 the neck are stiff and narrow, the longest ones being 

 two and a half inches. The tail feathers are black- 

 ish, tipped with white; the under tail coverts white- 

 tipped. In the female the neck tufts are smaller, 

 usually less than two inches in length, and the tail 

 feathers are barred with light brown. 



In the ordinary prairie hen of the Mississippi Valley, 

 Tympanuchus americanus, the scapulars are without 

 white dots near the ends, and the neck tufts of the 

 male are composed of more than ten narrow feathers, 

 whose edges are parallel and whose ends are rounded, 

 or sometimes almost square. The feathered young are 

 more or less dotted with patches of white and black 

 and the top of the head is reddish brown. The bird'? 

 length is from eighteen to nineteen inches for the male, 

 and a little less for the female. 



The Martha's Vineyard heath hen, T. cupido, is 

 slightly smaller than the western prairie hen, has large 

 and noticeable spots of whitish at the end of the scapu- 

 lar feathers. The neck tufts of the male have not more 

 than ten of the narrow feathers, all of which are sharply 

 pointed. 



The lesser prairie hen, T. pallidicinctus, is also 

 slightly smaller than the Mississippi Valley prairie 

 hen, and is recognizable because each dark bar across 

 the plumage consists of a continuous brown bar en- 



