262 PINNATED GROUSE. 
he produces that extraordinary sound so familiar to every one who 
resides in his vicinity, and which has been described in the foregoing 
account. So very novel and characteristic did the action of these 
birds appear to me at first sigut, that, instead of shooting them down, 
I sketched their attitude hastiiy on the spot, while concealed among 
‘a brush-heap, with seven or eight of them within a short distance. 
Three of these I afterwards carried home with me. 
This rare bird, though an inhaoitant of different 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 
interspersed with trees, or partially overgrown with shrub oak, are his 
favorite 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 Pocano, in North- 
ampton 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 Colum- 
bia 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 : — First, their mode 
of flight is generally direct, and laborious, and ill calculated for the 
labyrinth 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 
believed, 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 off, 
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 rain, water is very rarely to be met with. For the space of a 
week he watched her closely, to discover whether she still refused to 
drink; but, though she was constantly fed on Indian Corn, the cup 
and water still remained untouched and untasted. Yet no sooner did 
he again sprinkle water on the bars of the cage, than she eagerly and 
rapidly vicked them off as before. 
