BULLETIN NUMBER FIVE 
191 
But alas! All the eggs were in one basket. 
In the spring of 1916—the nesting season—a prairie fire 
swept over the home grounds of the heath hen, and all save 
a pitiful remnant of the flocks were burned to death. Some 
mother birds were burned on their nests. At this time no 
man can say precisely how many birds remain, but it is 
believed to be less than 100. 
In America men are spending money in efforts to procure 
from Europe, and colonize here, the black cock, or caper¬ 
cailzie. It is a fine bird, but it is not probable that it ever 
will become acclimatized in the United States, and thrive, 
as the ringnecked pheasant has done in a few states. Nat¬ 
ural enemies, and other influences operating against it, are 
too numerous and too powerful. 
We can witness the failure of these efforts at the intro¬ 
duction of foreign species with complacency. People who 
are so slothful, or so stupid, as to permit their own finest 
upland game birds to be exterminated by enemies whom 
they could control if they would, do not deserve to succeed 
in replacing them with foreign species. If the men of Wy¬ 
oming, Colorado, Montana, Idaho and other states permit 
the automobiles and pump gunners to exterminate their 
sage grouse, then will they deserve sage-brush plains abso¬ 
lutely barren of bird life. Will they turn over to their sons 
and grandsons, ten or twenty years hence, “hunting 
grounds” of lifeless desolation? 
THE SAGE GROUSE. 
The sage grouse is the largest and the finest upland game 
bird of all America, except the wild turkey. It is nearly 
twice as large as any other grouse, and only the ruffed 
grouse surpasses it in beauty. Any state may well be proud 
to have such a bird in its bird fauna. In token of its com¬ 
manding position as the leader of all the grouse species of 
North America, it is often called the “Cock-of-the-Plains.” 
