A BELLICOSE CONCERT. 
373 
unable to distinguish the regularity of these triple notes, there being, 
at such times, one continued humming, which is disagreeable and per- 
plexing, from the impossibility of ascertaining from what distance, or 
even quarter, it proceeds. While uttering his call, the bird exhibits 
all the ostentatious gesticulations of a turkey-cock ; erecting and 
fluttering his neck-wings, wheeling and passing before the female, and 
close before his fellows, as in defiance. Now and then are heard some 
rapid cackling notes, not unlike that of a person tickled to excessive 
laughter ; and, in short, one can scarcely listen to them without feeling 
disposed to laugh from sympathy. These are uttered by the males 
while engaged in fight, on which occasion they leap up against each 
other, exactly in the manner of turkeys, and seemingly with more 
malice than effect." It should be added that this bellicose concert 
begins shortly before daybreak, and lasts until eight or nine o'clock in 
the evening, when the warrior-musicians are compelled to attend to the 
demands of appetite. Audubon remarked that the aerial sacs, or bags, 
before described, lost their fulness after the matutinal " tooting " ceased; 
and when he pierced them, the bird could no longer cry. In another 
case he perforated only one, and then the bird cried, but very feebly. 
The food of the prairie hen consists of all kinds of vegetable sub- 
stances, and a variety of insects, snails, and other small animals. In 
Audubon's time, the birds were so common in Kentucky that their flesh 
was no better esteemed than butcher's meat, and the hunter did not 
look upon them as game. They were treated, he says, with the con- 
tempt which we lavish upon crows in other parts of the United States; 
and this on account of the ravages they committed in winter in the 
gardens and vineyards, and in summer in the fields. The children of the 
labourers and the negroes were engag-ed from morninor to evening in driv- 
ing them from the plantations, and in arranging traps and snares for 
their capture. When the winter winds blew keenly, they frequently 
entered the farmyards, shared in the repasts of the domestic fowl, settled 
on the roofs of the houses, ran up and down the village street. 
It is at the beginning of winter that the prairie hens, when they 
are common, collect in numerous flocks or troops, not to separate 
again until the coming of the welcome spring. 
2-t A 
