PINNATED GROUSE. 237 
the point of a pin through each sac, and found that 
thereafter it was unable to toot. He performed this 
same experiment with another bird on one side only, 
and found that the next morning it uttered the tooting 
sound with the uninjured air-sac, but could not inflate 
the one that had been punctured. He states that his 
efforts to decoy this species by imitating its curious 
sounds were unsuccessful, “although the ruffed grouse 
is easily deceived in this manner.” 
After the close of the mating operations the locations 
of the nests are selected. Often they may be in hedges 
and the margins of clumps of underbrush, in fence cor- 
ners or along the borders of sloughs, but often, again, 
in the middle of a field amid the tall grass. The eggs 
number from eleven to fourteen, and sets of twenty 
or even twenty-one eggs are not unknown. They vary 
in color from cream to light olive or pale brown, and 
are often regularly spotted with fine pin-points of 
reddish brown. Captain Bendire regards the prairie 
chicken as one of the most prolific of our game birds. 
Now, however, comes the season of danger; the eggs 
have been deposited in a slight depression, scratched 
out among the weeds or grass, and the hen begins to 
brood. If she has nested early and the season is late, 
the streams may rise and flood her nest and destroy 
the eggs or drown the tiny young, if they have already 
hatched ; or early prairie fires, burning among the dead 
grass and weeds of the preceding season, may destroy 
mother and clutch alike; or, later still, the mowing 
machine may kill the mother or the young, too small 
