BULLETIN NUMBER FIVE 191 



But alas! All the eggs were in one basket. 



In the spring of 1916 — the nesting season — a prairie fire 

 swept over the home grounds of the heath hen, and all save 

 a pitiful remnant of the flocks were burned to death. Some 

 mother birds were burned on their nests. At this time no 

 man can say precisely how many birds remain, but it is 

 Relieved to be less than 100. 



In America men are spending money in efforts to procure 

 from Europe, and colonize here, the black cock, or caper- 

 cailzie. It is a fine bird, but it is not probable that it ever 

 will become acclimatized in the United States, and thrive, 

 as the ringnecked pheasant has done in a few states. Nat- 

 ural enemies, and other influences operating against it, are 

 too numerous and too powerful. 



We can witness the failure of these efforts at the intro- 

 duction of foreign species with complacency. People who 

 are so slothful, or so stupid, as to permit their own finest 

 upland game birds to be exterminated by enemies whom 

 they could control if they would, do not deserve to succeed 

 in replacing them with foreign species. If the men of Wy- 

 oming, Colorado, Montana, Idaho and other states permit 

 the automobiles and pump gunners to exterminate their 

 sage grouse, then will they deserve sage-brush plains abso- 

 lutely barren of bird life. Will they turn over to their sons 

 and grandsons, ten or twenty years hence, ''hunting 

 grounds" of lifeless desolation? 



THE SAGE GROUSE. 



The sage grouse is the largest and the finest upland game 

 bird of all America, except the wild turkey. It is nearly 

 twice as large as any other grouse, and only the ruffed 

 grouse surpasses it in beauty. Any state may well be proud 

 to have such a bird in its bird fauna. In token of its com- 

 manding position as the leader of all the grouse species of 

 North America, it is often called the "Cock-of-the-Plains." 



