PRAIRIE HEN. 



prairie chicken. pinnated grouse. 



Tympanuchus americanus. 



Char. Above, brownish ochraceous, tinged with gray ; back barred 

 with black ; below, white, barred with dusky brown ; throat bufifish ; head 

 with slight crest; erectile tufts of 7 to 10 long stiff feathers on sides of 

 neck, and below these, patches of bare and elastic skin. Length about 18 

 inches. 



Nest. On the open prairie amid tufts of long grass or at the foot of a 

 bush ; a slight hollow scratched out and thinly lined with grass and 

 feathers. 



Eggs. 8-16 (usually about 12); dull buff or greenish yellow, some- 

 times with a reddish tinge, and occasionally spotted slightly with brown ; 

 1.70 X 1.25. 



Choosing particular districts for residence, the Grouse, or 

 Prairie Hen, is consequently by far less common than the pre- 

 ceding species. Confined to dry, barren, and bushy tracts of 

 small extent, these birds are in several places now wholly or 

 nearly exterminated. Along the Atlantic coast they are still 

 met with on the Grouse plains of New Jersey, on the brushy 

 plains of Long Island, in similar shrubby barrens in Westford, 

 Connecticut, in the island of Martha's Vineyard on the south 

 side of Massachusetts Bay, and formerly, as probably in many 

 other tracts, according to the information which I have re- 

 ceived from Lieut. -Governor Winthrop, they were so common 

 on the ancient bushy site of the city of Boston that laboring 

 people or servants stipulated with their employers not to have 

 the Heath Hen brought to table oftener than a few times in the 



