60 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING. 
The prairie fowl (Cupidonia Cupido) is probably the 
best known member of its family, and is, by many per- 
sons, considered to excel all the others in delicacy of 
flesh and game qualities. Its general color is blackish- 
brown, varied with tawny; the throat is buff, and the 
vent and under tail-coverts are white. It carries the 
well-known distensible sacs on each side of the neck, 
and the little wings or tufts which have given it the spe- 
cific name it bears. 
When the males are soliciting the company of the 
opposite sex in the spring, they inflate these sacs to 
the size of a small orange, expand the winglets, spread 
and erect the tail, and commence booming, or tooting, 
long before daybreak, and continue it until sunset in 
places where they are numerous; but where they are 
hunted much, they are seldom heard after sunrise. They 
are always pugnacious, but unusually so at this period; 
hence, if two meet, they indulge in fierce battles, which 
terminate only by the flight or death of one of them. 
When they are “calling.” the air reservoirs, which are 
alternately filled and emptied, produce sounds not unlike 
the roll of a muffled drum. This roll can be heard a 
mile away in calm weather; but if the skin is punctured 
it ceases to be resonant. As soon as the love season is 
over, the hens leave the males and build their nests 
of grass and leaves in the open prairie or under the shel- 
ter of a bush. The number of eggs laid by each varies 
from ten to sixteen; these are a light-brownish color, ir- 
regularly spotted with black. If the first eggs are de- 
stroyed, another set is laid, but if not, only one brood 
is raised in a season. 
When the young appear, the mother displays the 
greatest solicitude for their welfare, and keeps steadily 
calling to them whenever they manifest a disposition to 
stray from her side. Ifa man approaches them she ruf- 
fles up her feathers and assumes a combative attitude, 
