BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 171 



feet of his house on Brewster Street. Mr. Dearie's experience occurred in Sep- 

 tember, 1883, and that year, if I remember rightly, was the last when Quail were 

 seen in the parts of Cambridge just mentioned. 



75. Bonasa umbellus (Linn.). 

 Ruffed Grouse. Partridge. 



Permanent resident, formerly very common. 



NESTING DATES. 



May 15 — 25. 



Ruffed Grouse were common enough at all seasons, twenty-five or thirty 

 years ago, in the wooded portions of Arlington, Belmont, Lexington and Wal- 

 tham. In autumn and winter a few could always be found in the Fresh Pond 

 Swamps and also on the cedar- and pine-clad ridges just to the westward of Mount 

 Auburn, while during the season of Partridge ' madness ' (October and Novem- 

 ber) an occasional straggler was even known to invade the more densely popu- 

 lated parts of Old Cambridge or Cambridgeport. But the cutting away of woods, 

 and especially of undergrowth, the building of houses, the multiplication of dogs 

 and cats, and the ever growing persecution on the part of the sportsmen, have 

 combined to render most of the former haunts of the Partridge within the 

 Cambridge Region no longer tenable. A few birds still linger, however, in the 

 more retired portions of the towns above mentioned, especially in the neighbor- 

 hood of Arlington Heights and Waverley ; one was seen by Capt. Wirt Rob- 

 inson in the Maple Swamp as lately as 1897 and a nest containing eggs was 

 fovlnd by Mr. O. A. Lothrop in Belmont as recently as May, 1902. 



[ Tympanuchus americanus (Reich.). Prairie Hen. In tVie early spring of 1884 or 1885 

 six pairs of Prairie Hens, brougiit from Iowa, were liberated by Mr. Robert B. Nesbitt of Cam- 

 bridge at various points along Concord Avenue betvfeen Belmont and Concord. He tells me 

 that he was afterwards informed — on somewhat questionable authority, however — that several 

 of these birds reared broods of young that season. I can vouch for the fact that a year or two 

 later an adult male spent most of the spring in a grain iield near the village of Carlisle, Massa- 

 chusetts, where it was seen by my friend Mr. George H. Robbins and several of his neighbors. 

 Another bird of the same sex was met with by Mr. Walter Faxon in the Fresh Pond Swamps (on 

 the Arlington side of Little River) on May 14, 1892. The latter instance might be talcen to 



