2l8 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 



