Identifier: scienceguide1630amer (find matches)
Title: Guide leaflet
Year: 1901 (1900s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: American Museum of Natural History Natural history
Publisher: New York : The Museum
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: IMLS / LSTA / METRO

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ithinstriking distance of a rival who has been giving a similar exhibition.Then, with much clashing of wings, a fight ensues which often strewsthe nearby grass with feathers. These tournaments of display and combat are doubtless designed toarouse the attention of the females, but they also occur when onlymales are present. Within an hour or two after sunrise, the timevarying with the ardor of the birds, the competition is over for the dayand the rivals feed peacefully together, until they enter the lists thefollowing morning. Market hunting has greatly decreased the numbers of Prairie Hens,but on the United States Government Forest Reservation, in thesparsely inhabited sandhills of western Nebraska, on the line of theChicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, where the studies for thisgroup were made, they still e\M . The eastern Prairie Chicken, or Heath Hen, was once locally com-mon from New Jersey to Massachusetts; until L929 it was found on Marthas Vineyard but it is now extinct. 57
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O -J w I H d 03 PQ PQ Si 26. THE PRAIRIE HEN IN NEBRASKA ON frosty spring mornings, as the sun rises over the prairies, onemay at times hear a singular, resonant, booming note, booni-ah-b-o-o-m, boom-ah-b-o-o-m. It is the love-song of the PrairieHen. He may be near at hand or possibly two miles away, so far doesthis sound, unobstructed by tree or hill, carry in the clear air. It is wellworth following, for we may find the maker of it, with perhaps ten tofifty of his kind, engaged in a most remarkable performance. During the mating season, from March until early in May, thePrairie Hens of a certain district or area gather before daybreak to takepart in these courtship demonstrations. The feather-tufts on eitherside of the neck are erected like horns, the tail raised and spread, thewings dropped, when the bird first rushes forward a few steps, pauses,inflates its orange-like air-sacs, and, with a violent, jerking, musculareffort, produces the startling boom, whi

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