THE PRAIRIE CHICKEN, OR SHARPTAILED GROUSE. 409 



The young are hatched in about twenty days (?) and are covered 

 with yellow down. From the first, like all their kind, they are 

 strong and able to help themselves. By about the tenth day, 

 though still weighing under two ounces, their wings are large and 

 strong, so that when the startled mother rises with a "whirr" there 

 are a dozen little " whirrs," and away she flies followed seemingly 

 by a flock of sparrows, but they are only her young, still clothed in 

 the yellow down all except the wings which shew the long strong 

 quills of flight. When half grown they are readily mistaken for 

 young turkeys. At about two months they are full grown but still 

 with the mother. At this time the family generally numbers from 

 four to six or eight individuals, but the average number of eggs is 

 about twelve, so we can imagine the numbers that fall victims annually 

 to their natural enemies. It is noticeable that all summer I never 

 found grain in their crops, so that they cannot be injurious to stand- 

 ing grain ; indeed, I have never seen them in it. But now that the 

 young are grown, they find their way to the stacks so regularly and 

 pertinaciously that they form a considerable item in the autumn 

 dietary of the farmer, while they can only damage the grain that is 

 exposed on the very top. They continue on the plains and about the 

 farms until the first fall of snow, which immediately sets them 

 en masse to the timber. In summer they rarely perch on trees (even at 

 night, for they sleep squatting in the grass), but now they make them 

 their favorite stations, and live largely on the browse there gathered. 

 This is the time for the sportsman, for they are fat and well flavored. 

 Any small clump of birch or willow is sure to contain some dozens 

 every morning. As the winter advances, they cease to come on the 

 plains, their haunts then being sparsely timbered country, especially 

 if sandy and well supplied with rose bushes. They now act more 

 like a properly adapted tree-liver than a ground-dwelling " Tetrao," 

 for they fly from one tree to another, and perch and walk about 

 the branches with perfect ease, seeming to spend much more time 

 there than on the ground. When in a tree they are not at all 

 possessed of that feeling of security from all hunters, which makes 

 the " Ruffed Grouse" so easy a prey to pot-hunters, when so situated 

 the "Pintail" on the contrary is very shy and disposed to fly at 

 150 yards. 



Like most wild animals, they have a foreknowledge of storms, and 

 when some firewood hunter returning from the woods reports that 

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