PINNATED GROUSE. 277 



very novel and characteristic did the action of these birds appear to me 

 at first sight, that, instead of shooting them down, I sketched their atti- 

 tude hastily on the spot ; while concealed among a brush-heap, with 

 seven or eight of them within a short distance. Three of these I after- 

 wards carried home with me. 



This rare bird, though an inhabitant of difierent and very distant 

 districts of North America, is extremely particular in selecting his place 

 of residence ; pitching only upon those tracts whose features and 

 productions correspond with his modes of life ; and avoiding immense 

 intermediate regions that he never visits. Open dry plains, thinly inter- 

 spersed with trees, or partially overgrown with shrub-oak, are his favor- 

 ite haunts. Accordingly we find these birds on the Grouse plains of 

 New Jersey, in Burlington county, as well as on the brushy plains of 

 Long Island— among the pines and shrub-oaks of Pocono, in Northamp- 

 ton county, Pennsylvania — over the whole extent of the Barrens of 

 Kentucky — on the luxuriant plains and prairies of the Indiana territory, 

 and Upper Louisiana ; and according to the information of the late 

 Governor Lewis, on the vast and remote plains of the Columbia river. 

 In all these places preserving the same singular habits. 



Their predilection for such situations will be best accounted for by 

 considering the following facts and circumstances. Pirst, their mode of 

 flight is generally direct, and laborious, and ill calculated for the laby- 

 rinth of a high and thick forest, crowded and intersected with trunks 

 and arms of trees, that require continual angular evolution of wing, or 

 sudden turnings, to which they are by no means accustomed. I have 

 always observed them to avoid the high-timbered groves that occur here 

 and there in the Barrens. Connected with this fact is a circumstance 

 related to me by a very respectable inhabitant of that country, viz. : that 

 one forenoon a cock Grouse struck the stone chimney of his house with 

 such force as instantly to fall dead to the ground. 



Secondly, their known dislike of ponds, marshes, or watery places, 

 which they avoid on all occasions, drinking but seldom, and, it is be- 

 lieved, never from such places. Even in confinement this peculiarity 

 has been taken notice of. While I was in the state of Tennessee, a 

 person living within a few miles of Nashville had caught an old hen 

 Grouse in a trap ; and being obliged to keep her in a large cage, as she 

 struck and abused the rest of the poultry, he remarked that she never 

 drank ; and that she even avoided that quarter of the cage where the 

 cup containing the water was placed. Happening one day to let some 

 water fall on the cage, it trickled down in drops along the bars, which 

 the bird no sooner observed, than she eagerly picked them ofi", drop by 

 drop, with a dexterity that showed she had been habituated to this 

 mode of quenching her thirst ; and probably to this mode only, in those 

 dry and barren tracts, where, except the drops of dew, and drops of 



