Page:Ornithological biography, or an account of the habits of the birds of the United States of America, vol 2.djvu/527

Rh fore me in dismay the frightened Grous and her cowering brood. The weather was extremely beautiful, and I thought that the Barrens must have been the parts from which Kentucky derived her name of the "Garden of the West!"

There it was, that, year after year, and each successive season, I studied the habits of the Pinnated Grous. It was there that, before sunrise, or at the close of day, I heard its curious boomings, witnessed its obstinate battles, watched it during the progress of its courtships, noted its nest and eggs, and followed its young until, fully grown, they betook themselves to their winter quarters.

When I first removed to Kentucky, the Pinnated Grous were so abundant, that they were held in no higher estimation as food than the most common flesh, and no " hunter of Kentucky" deigned to shoot them. They were, in fact, looked upon with more abhorrence than the Crows are at present in Massachusetts and Maine, on account of the mischief they committed among the fruit trees of the orchards during winter, when they fed on their buds, or while in the spring months they picked up the grain in the fields. The farmer's children or those of his Negroes were employed to drive them away with rattles from morning to night, and also caught them in pens and traps of various kinds. In those days, during the winter, the Grous would enter the farm-yard and feed with the poultry, alight on the houses, or walk in the very streets of the villages. I recollect having caught several in a stable at Henderson, where they had followed some Wild Turkeys. In the course of the same winter, a friend of mine, who was fond of practising rifle-shooting, killed upwards of forty in one morning, but picked none of them up, so satiated with Grous was he, as well as every member of his family. My own servants preferred the fattest flitch of bacon to their flesh, and not unfrequently laid them aside as unfit for cooking.

Such an account may appear strange to you, reader; but what will you think when I tell you, that, in that same country, where, twenty-five years ago they could not have been sold at more than one cent, a-piece, scarcely one is now to be found? The Grous have abandoned the State of Kentucky, and removed (like the Indians) every season farther to the westward, to escape from the murderous white man. In the Eastern States, where some of these birds still exist, game-laws have been made for their protection during a certain part of the year, when, after all, few escape to breed the next season. To the westward you must go as far at least as the