94 LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS. 



the thinly settled interior it is frequently seen in the roads or along the 

 edges of the cover by the farmers, or started in the depths of the woods by 

 the hounds of the rabbit and fox hunters. 



"Its range extends, practically, over the entire wooded portion of the 

 island, but the bird is not found regularly or at all numerously outside an 

 area of about 40 square miles. This area comprises most of the elevated 

 central portions of the island, although it also touches the sea at not a few 

 points on the north and south shores. In places it rolls into great rounded 

 hills and long irregular ridges, over which are scattered stretches of second- 

 growth woods, often miles in extent, and composed chiefly of scarlet, black, 

 white, and post oaks from 15 to 40 feet in height. Here and there, where 

 the valleys spread out broad and level, are fields which were cleared by the 

 early settlers more than a hundred years ago, and which still retain sufficient 

 fertility to yield very good crops of English hay, corn, potatoes, and other 

 vegetables. Again, this undulating surface gives way to wide, level, sandy 

 plains, covered with a growth of bear, chinquapin, and post-oak scrub, from 

 knee to waist high, so stiff and matted as to be almost impenetrable; or to 

 rocky pastures, dotted with thickets of sweet fern, bayberry, huckleberry, 

 dwarf sumac, and other low-growing shrubs. 



"Clear, rapid trout brooks wind their way to the sea through open 

 meadows, or long narrow swamps wooded with red maples, black alders, 

 high huckleberry bushes, andromeda, and poison dogwood, and overrun with 

 tangled skeins of green briars. 



"At all seasons the Heath Hens live almost exclusively in the oak woods, 

 where the acorns furnish them abundant food, although, like our Ruffed 

 Grouse, they occasionally at early morning and just after sunset venture out 

 a little way in the open to pick up scattered grains of corn or to pluck a few 

 clover leaves, of which they are extremely fond. They also wander to some 

 extent over the scrub-oak plains, especially when blueberries are ripe and 

 abundant. In winter, during long-continued snows, they sometimes approach 

 buildings, to feed upon the grain which the farmers throw out to them. A 

 man living near West Tisbury told me that last winter a flock visited his 

 barn at about the same hour each day. One cold snowy morning he counted 

 sixteen perched in a row on the top rail of a fence near the barnyard. It is 

 unusual to see so many together now, the number in a covey rarely exceeding 

 six or eight, but in former times packs containing from one to two hundred, 

 birds each were occasionally met with late in the autumn. 



"Only one person of the many whom I questioned on the subject had 

 ever seen a Heath Hen's nest. It was in oak woods, among sprouts at the base 

 of a large stump, and contained either twelve or thirteen eggs. The date, he 

 thought, was about June 10. This seemed late, but I have a set of six eggs 

 taken on the Vineyard July 24, 1885, and on July 19, 1890, I met a blueberry 

 picker who only the day before had started a brood of six young, less than 

 half grown. These facts prove that this bird is habitually a late breeder. 



