PINNATED GROUSE 237 



the point of a pin through each sac, and found that 

 thereafter it was unable to toot. He performed this 

 same experiment with another bird on one side only, 

 and found that the next morning it uttered the tooting 

 sound with the uninjured air-sac, but could not inflate 

 the one that had been punctured. He states that his 

 efforts to decoy this species by imitating its curious 

 sounds were unsuccessful, "although the ruffed grouse 

 is easily deceived in this manner." 



After the close of the mating operations the locations 

 of the nests are selected. Often they may be in hedges 

 and the margins of clumps of underbrush, in fence cor- 

 ners or along the borders of sloughs, but often, again, 

 in the middle of a field amid the tall grass. The eggs 

 number from eleven to fourteen, and sets of twenty 

 or even twenty-one eggs are not unknown. They vary 

 in color from cream to light olive or pale brown, and 

 are often regularly spotted with fine pin-points of 

 reddish brown. Captain Bendire regards the prairie 

 chicken as one of the most prolific of our game birds. 



Now, however, comes the season of danger ; the eggs 

 have been deposited in a slight depression, scratched 

 out among the weeds or grass, and the hen begins to 

 brood. If she has nested early and the season is late, 

 the streams may rise and flood her nest and destroy 

 the eggs or drown the tiny young, if they have already 

 hatched ; or early prairie fires, burning among the dead 

 grass and weeds of the preceding season, may destroy 

 mother and clutch alike; or, later still, the mowing 

 machine may kill the mother or the young, too small 



