A History of North American Birds, Land Birds. Volume 3

Where their food occurs abundantly they separate into smaller flocks, composed of birds of all ages and sexes. At times they are known to approach farmhouses, associate with the domesticated fowl, and enter the corn-cribs in quest of food, passing the fall and the winter in this manner.

Early in February the love-season is said to commence, the first demonstrations being made by the males, but for some time persistently avoided by the females. At this period the sexes roost apart. When a female utters a call-note, the male birds within hearing return the cry, uttering notes similar to those with which the domestic Turkey greets any very unusual sound. If the call-note has been uttered by a female on the ground, the males fly to the place, spreading and erecting their tails, drawing their heads back on their shoulders, depressing their wings with a quivering motion, and strutting pompously about. At the same time they emit from their lungs a succession of very peculiar puffs. On these occasions the males often encounter each other, and desperate contests ensue, which frequently have a fatal termination, caused by furious blows inflicted on the head. When one Cock-Turkey has thus destroyed its rival, it is said to caress the dead body in an apparently affectionate manner.

When the Turkeys have mated, the connection is supposed to last for that season, though a male Turkey is often known to have more than a single mate; and the hens are said also to keep apart from the males while they are laying their eggs, for the cock would inevitably destroy them. At the end of the love-season the males become emaciated, and cease to gobble. They then separate entirely from the females, and keep apart by themselves until they recover their strength, when they reunite in small flocks.

The female is said to begin to deposit her eggs about the middle of April, selecting for that purpose a place as much concealed as possible from her many enemies. The nest, always on the ground, consists of a few withered leaves in a hollow scratched out by the side of a fallen log, or the top of a prostrate tree, or under a thicket, or within the edge of a cane-brake, but always in a dry place. The eggs sometimes amount to twenty in number, though there are usually from ten to fifteen. They are described as of a dull cream-color, sprinkled with reddish dots. When the female leaves her nest, she is said to be very careful to cover them with leaves, so that it is always difficult for any one to find them. Mr. Audubon observed that Turkey-hens not unfrequently selected small islands in which to deposit their eggs, apparently on account of the great masses of drift-timber which accumulated at their heads, in which they could seek protection and shelter.

If a female is approached while sitting on her eggs, she rarely moves unless she is discovered. Mr. Audubon has frequently approached within a few paces of a nest, the female remaining undisturbed. They seldom abandon their nest when it has been discovered by man, but forsake it if any of the eggs have been destroyed by any kind of animal. If the eggs are taken or destroyed, the female prepares for another nest, but otherwise has only one brood in a season. Audubon also states that he has known several hens associate together, deposit their eggs in the same nest, and rear their broods together, having once found three hens sitting on forty-two eggs in a single nest, one female at least being always present to protect it. When the eggs are near hatching, the female will not leave her eggs under any circumstances, and will suffer herself to be made a prisoner rather than abandon them. The mother assists the young birds to extricate themselves from the egg-shell, caresses and dries them with her bill, and aids them in their first efforts to totter out of the nest. As the brood follow her, she is very watchful against Hawks or other enemies, spreads her wings a little to protect them, and calls them close to her side, keeping them on dry ground and carefully guarding them from wet, which is very injurious to them when young. When two weeks old, they begin to be able to follow their mother, at night to roost in the low limb of some tree, and to leave the woods in the daytime in quest of berries and other food. The young usually feed on various kinds of small berries and insects. The full-grown Turkeys prefer the pecan-nuts and wild grapes to any other kind of food.

They are also said to feed on grass, various kinds of plants, corn, and other grain, seeds, fruit, and also upon beetles, small lizards, tadpoles, etc. In feeding in the woods, they turn over the dry leaves with their feet, and seem instinctively to know the presence of suitable food. They not unfrequently betray their presence in the neighborhood by the bare places they thus leave behind them in the woods where they have been feeding.

After heavy falls of snow and the formation of a hard crust, the Turkeys are said to be compelled to remain several days on their roosts without food thus proving their capability of enduring a continued abstinence.

Turkeys are hunted in various ways and by different expedients to facilitate their destruction. In the spring they are attracted by drawing the air, in a peculiar manner, through one of the second joint-bones of a wing. The sound thus produced resembles the voice of the female, on hearing which the male comes up and is shot. The cry of the Barred Owl is also imitated at night where Turkeys are at roost, who betray the place by their rolling gobble, uttered when alarmed. One of the most common methods of capturing Wild Turkeys is by means of a trap known as a Turkey-pen. A covered enclosure is made, constructed of trees, about four feet high and of various sizes, closed everywhere except at one end, where a small opening is left through which a small trench is dug, sloping very gradually at both ends, into and from the pen. The portion nearest the enclosure is covered. This passage-way, the interior of the pen, and the vicinity of the opening, to some distance into the forest, are strewn with corn. The Turkeys, attracted by the corn, follow it into the pen, and when they wish to leave endeavor to get out by the sides, but have not intelligence enough to escape by the opening through which they entered. In this manner they are sometimes entrapped in great numbers.

In unsettled parts of the country, Wild Turkeys are often known to associate with tame ones, sometimes to fight with them and to drive them from their food.

Mr. Audubon supposed our common tame Turkey to have originated in these birds, yet in his accounts of the habits of the latter he mentions several indications of divergence. A Wild Turkey which he had reared almost from the shell, and which had become very tame, would never roost with the domesticated birds, but always betook itself at night to the roof of the house, where it remained until dawn.

Mr. Bachman states that Wild Turkeys kept in confinement, in a condition of partial domestication, but separate from the domestic birds, lose the brilliancy of their plumage in the third generation, become of a pale brown, and have here and there an intermixture of white feathers. On the other hand, Major Leconte states, most positively, that the Wild Turkey has never been known to become so nearly domesticated as to propagate its race in confinement, notwithstanding the many efforts made to accomplish this result. This statement is, however, negative, and must be taken with reservation. In 1852, in Mr. Barnum’s grounds, near Niagara Falls, I saw Wild Turkeys with broods of young birds, though how far successful this attempt proved in the sequel I do not know, and Dr. Bachman’s statement seems to be quite positive evidence that they can be thus reared.

Mr. Audubon describes the eggs of the Wild Turkey as measuring 2.87 inches in length and 2.00 in breadth, and rather pointed at one end; their ground-color is given as of a uniform pale-yellowish tint, marked all over with pale rusty-brown spots.

Specimens in my collection vary from 2.55 to 2.35 inches in length, and in breadth from 1.85 to 1.75 inches. They are of an elongate-oval shape, are pointed at one end, quite obtuse at the other. The ground is a rich dark cream-color, very generally spotted with rounded blotches of a rare umber-brown.

Meleagris gallopavo, var. mexicana, GouldMEXICAN TURKEY

Meleagris mexicana, Gould, Pr. Zoöl. Soc. 1856, 61.—Baird, Birds N. Am. 1858, 618.—Coues, P. A. N. S. Philad. 1866, 93 (Fort Whipple, Arizona).—Elliot, Illust. II, pl. xxxviii.—Baird, Rept. Agricultural Dept. for 1866 (1867) 288.—Cooper, Orn. Cal. I, 1870, 523. Meleagris gallopavo, Gray, Cat. Gallinæ, Brit. Mus. V, 1867, 42.

Sp. Char. Similar to var. gallopavo, but feathers of the rump, the tail-coverts, and tail-feathers, tipped with whitish, instead of dark rusty; gloss more greenish. ♂ (44,731, Mirador): Wing, 20.50; tail, 18.50; culmen, 1.00; tarsus, 6.50; middle toe, 3.50.

Hab. Rocky Mountains, from Western Texas to Arizona, and south along the table land of Mexico.

Wild Turkeys from the vicinity of the Rocky Mountains differ strikingly from those east of the Mississippi in the feathers of the sides of the body behind, and in the upper and under tail-coverts. These are all tipped with light brownish-yellow for about half an inch, more or less with the region, and the tail is tipped with the same. The chestnut ground of the tail and coverts is also considerably lighter. The gloss on the feathers of the rump is green, not purple. The coverts, too, lack in a measure the purple shade in the chestnut. The metallic reflections generally have rather more green than in the eastern bird.

In one specimen (♀, 10,030, from Fort Thorn) the light edgings are almost white, and so much extended as to conceal the entire rump. All the feathers of the under parts of the body are edged broadly with white, and the tail is tipped with the same for more than an inch. This specimen also has the head considerably more hairy than in the eastern skins, but the others from the same region do not differ so much in this respect from eastern ones.

Two specimens from the Llano Estacado of Texas are exactly intermediate between New Mexican skins and examples from Arkansas, the former being typical mexicana, and the latter slightly different from true gallopavo. These Texan specimens have the tips of the upper tail-coverts pale ochraceous, instead of pure white; in the Arkansas skins these tips are rufous-chestnut, instead of dark maroon-chestnut, as in typical gallopavo from Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Many, or indeed most, specimens of mexicana have the black subterminal zone of the tail with a more or less distinct metallic bronzing, which we have never seen in any specimens of gallopavo.

It is to this race that we are indebted for the origin of our domestic Turkey, and not to that of the eastern parts of North America.

Habits. There is very little on record as to the possession of distinctive peculiarities by this race of North American Turkeys. If, as is now generally supposed, it be the original source whence the domestic fowl was derived, we are all sufficiently conversant with its performances in the barnyard, and its excellences for the table.

Specimens of its eggs collected in Arizona exhibit no noteworthy differences from the gallopavo.

In the accompanying foot-note we reproduce an article on the origin of the domestic Turkey, by Professor Baird, published in the Report of the Agricultural Department for 1866, which contains some points of interest, bearing on the origin of the domestic Turkey and the habits of the Mexican variety.114

Family TETRAONIDÆ.—The Grouse

As already stated, the Tetraonidæ are pre-eminently characterized among gallinaceous birds by their densely feathered tarsi, and by the feathers of the nasal fossa or groove, which fill it completely, and conceal the nostrils. The toes are usually naked (feathered to the claws in the Ptarmigans), and with pectinations of scales along the edges. The tail-feathers vary from sixteen to eighteen and even twenty in number; the tail is rounded, acute, or forked. The orbital region is generally somewhat bare, with a naked stripe above the upper eyelid, beset by short fringe-like processes, while many genera have an inflatable air-sac on the side of the neck.

The following synoptical table will give a general view of the North American Tetraonidæ, although the arrangement is more artificial than natural. The species of Tetrao and Bonasa inhabit wooded regions; Lagopus belongs to the more arctic portions of the continent and the snowy ridges of the Rocky Mountains; the others are found in the great prairies of the West, Centrocercus being confined to the sterile plains covered with sage or wormwood.

The following synopsis is intended to aid in defining the genera, but does not profess to constitute a natural arrangement.

Genera

A. Legs feathered to and on the basal membrane of the toes, which are bare. No ruff on the side of the neck, which, however, has an extensible bare space.

Canace. Tail broad, nearly even, or truncate, and rounded laterally, two thirds the wing. Nasal fossæ scarcely half the culmen.

Centrocercus. Tail excessively lengthened and cuneate; longer than the wings. Nasal fossæ two thirds the culmen. Shafts of feathers on the lower throat very spinous.

Pediœcetes. Tail very short, but graduated, and with the two middle feathers (perhaps tail-coverts) lengthened beyond the rest, and two thirds as long as the wing; the next longest half the wing. Nasal fossæ not half the length of culmen. Shafts of throat-feathers normal.

B. Legs feathered to the lower end of tarsus.

Cupidonia. Tail very short, truncate, but laterally graduated; half the wings. Sides of neck with long, pointed, or lanceolate, stiff feathers. Nasal fossæ scarcely one third the culmen.

C. Legs feathered to the claws.

Lagopus. Tail about two thirds the wing, truncate; of sixteen to eighteen feathers. Most species becoming white in winter; none of the other genera exhibiting this peculiarity.

D. Lower half of tarsi bare, with two rows of scutellæ anteriorly.

Bonasa. Sides of neck with a ruff of broad, truncate, soft feathers. Tail very broad, square, as long as the wings.

Genus CANACE, Reichenbach

Gen. Char. Bill smooth, with no lateral groove, depressed, or broader than high. Feathers of the head and neck all normal, i.e. no crest, nor lengthened plumes of any kind. Tail lengthened (i.e. nearly equal to wing), rounded, the feathers broad to the end; consisting of from sixteen to twenty feathers. Toes naked.

Subgenera

Canace. Tail of sixteen feathers; no air-sac on side of the neck. Size small. (Type, T. canadensis, L.)

Dendragapus. Tail of twenty feathers; an inflatable air-sac on side of the neck. Size large. (Type, T. obscurus, Say.)

The American species of Wood Grouse appear, on comparison, to be generically distinct from Tetrao, of the Old World, (type, Tetrao urogallus,) and, moreover, are themselves comprised under two definable subgenera. Canace proper has a near relative in Falcipennis, Elliot, (type, Tetrao falcipennis, Hartlaub,) of Siberia, which differs merely in the attenuation of the primaries, and seems to us not separable from Canace. There is no European genus nearly related to our birds. T. urogallus differs very essentially in high, compressed, and light-colored bill, elongated and stiffened feathers of the whole head and neck, metallic colors, etc. T. (Lyrurus) tetrix approaches nearer in the bill, but also has metallic colors and a very peculiarly formed tail. Thus it seems absolutely necessary to adopt the name Canace, of Reichenbach, as a generic term by which to designate the American Wood Grouse.

Subgenus CANACE, Reichenbach

Canace, Reichenbach, Av. Syst. Nat. 1851. (Type, Tetrao canadensis, L.)

Gen. Char. Tail of sixteen feathers, rounded, the feathers broad to the end. A colored (red or yellow) “comb” of naked skin over the eye. No inflatable air-sac on side of the neck. No crest, nor unusual plumes, about the head or neck.

Species and Varieties

T. canadensis. Above distinctly barred with plumbeous and black; beneath black, with a white border to the throat, a white pectoral band, and white markings on the sides. Female barred with ochraceous, gray and black above, and with orange-ochraceous and black on the lower parts.

Tail rounded, tipped with rufous; upper tail-coverts tipped narrowly with deep ash. Hab. British America, east of the Rocky Mountains, from Alaska (Yukon region) to northern border of United States … var. canadensis.

Tail nearly even, black to the tip, or else with a narrow white terminal bar; upper tail-coverts broadly tipped with pure white. Hab. Northern Rocky Mountains to the Pacific coast … var. franklini.

Canace canadensis, var. canadensis, LinnSPRUCE PARTRIDGE; CANADA GROUSE

Tetrao canadensis, Linn. Syst. Nat. I, 1758, 159.—Forster, Phil. Trans. LXII, 1772, 389.—Sabine, Zoöl. App. Franklin’s Exped. 683.—Bonap. Amer. Orn. III, 1830, pl. xxi, f. 2, ♀.—Ib. Am. Phil. Trans. III, N. S. 1830, 391.—Rich. F. Bor. Amer. II, 1831, 346, pl. lxii, ♀.—Nuttall, Man. I, 1832, 667.—Aud. Orn. Biog. II, 1834, 437; V, 1839, 563, pl. clxxvi.—Ib. Birds Amer. V, 1842, 83, pl. cclxciv.—Baird, Birds N. Am. 1858, 622.—Maynard, B. E. Mass. 1870, 138 (Massachusetts).—Coues, P. A. N. S. 1861, 226.—Gray, Cat. Brit. Mus. 1867, 86.—Dall & Bannister, Tr. Chicago Ac. I, 1869, 287.—Finsch, Abh. Nat. Verz. III, 1872, 61. Canace canadensis, Reich. Av. Syst. Nat. 1851, p. xxix. Type, Bonap. Comptes Rendus, XLV, 1857, 428.—Elliot, P. A. N. S. 1864, 23.—Ib. Monog. Tetraon. pl. Tetrao canace, Linn. Syst. Nat. I, 1766, 275. Black Spotted Heathcock, Edwards, Glean. pl. cxviii. Spotted Grouse, Pennant.

Sp. Char. Tail of sixteen feathers. Above black. Feathers above distinctly banded with plumbeous; beneath uniform black, with a pectoral band of white, and white on the sides of the belly. Chin and throat above, black. Tail with a broad brownish-orange terminal band. Length, 16.20; wing, 6.70; tail, 5.44.

Female smaller, but somewhat similar; the black bars above broader, the inner gray bars of each feather, including the tail, replaced by broader ones of brownish-orange. The under parts have the feathers black, barred with the brownish-orange, which, on the tips of the belly-feathers, is pure white. The clear continuous black of the head and breast is wanting. The scapulars, greater coverts, and sides are streaked as in the male.

A female (No. 39,136, G. A. Boardman) from Maine differs from the above description in having the ground of the plumage a bright orange-rufous, the distinct bars of which are broader than the black ones; this is probably an autumnal bird, and represents the peculiar plumage of that season.

Males vary, individually, in the extent or uniformity of the black of the breast.

Specimens from Alaska (Nulato, Kodiak, etc.), Red River, Liard’s River and Fort Liard, Hudson’s Bay Territory, Canada, and Maine, appear to be absolutely identical.

The young in downy state are pale buff-yellow; the head above, with the back and wings, pale fulvous; a black stripe on side of head (from bill to end of auriculars), two spots on crown, and transverse crescentic spots on back and wings, black.

Hab. Spruce forests and swamps of the Northern United States to the Arctic seas; west nearly to Rocky Mountains.

Habits. This bird, variously known as the Spruce or Wood Partridge, Canada, Black, or Spotted Grouse, is found, in favorable localities, from the Northern United States as far north as the woods extend, to the Arctic Ocean, being found, even in midwinter, nearly to the 70th parallel. Sir John Richardson found all the thick and swampy black-spruce forests between Canada and the Arctic Sea abounding with this species. In winter it descends into Maine, Northern New York, and Michigan. Its migrations are, however, only partial, as it is found in the severest weather of midwinter, in considerable numbers, as far north as latitude 67°. According to Mr. Douglas, west of the Rocky Mountains it is replaced by the T. franklini. This bird is said to perch in trees, in flocks of eight or ten, and is so stupid that it may be taken by slipping a noose, fastened to the end of a stick, over its head. When disturbed, it flies heavily a short distance, and then alights again among the interior branches of a tree. Richardson invariably found its crop filled with the buds of the spruce-trees in the winter, and at that time its flesh was very dark and had a strong resinous taste. In districts where the Pinus banksiana grows it is said to prefer the buds of that tree. In the summer it feeds on berries, which render its flesh more palatable.

Captain Blakiston states that he has found this species as far west as Fort Carlton, and Mr. Ross has traced it northward on the Mackenzie to the Arctic coast.

Mr. Audubon met with it in Maine, in the vicinity of Eastport, where they were only to be met with in the thick and tangled forests of spruce and hackmatack. They were breeding in the inner recesses of almost impenetrable woods of hackmatack or larches. He was informed that they breed in that neighborhood about the middle of May, a full month sooner than they do in Labrador. In their love-season the males are said to exhibit many of the singular manners also noticeable in the other members of this family. They strut before the female on the ground, something in the manner of the common domestic Turkey-cock, occasionally rising in a spiral manner above her in the air; at the same time, both when on the ground and in the air, they beat their wings violently against their body, thereby producing a peculiar drumming sound, which is said to be much clearer than the well-known drumming of the Ruffed Grouse. These sounds can be heard at a considerable distance from the place where they are made.

The female constructs a nest of a bed of dry twigs, leaves, and mosses, which is usually carefully concealed, on the ground and under low horizontal branches of fir-trees. The number of eggs is said to vary from eight to eighteen in number. It is imagined by the common people that where more than ten eggs are found in the same nest they are the product of two females, who aid each other in their charge. The eggs are described by Audubon as of a deep fawn-color, irregularly splashed with different tints of brown. They have but a single brood in a season, and the young follow the mother as soon as they leave the shell.

As soon as incubation commences, the males desert the females and keep in small flocks by themselves, removing to different woods, where they usually become much more shy and wary than at any other season of the year.

In their movements on the ground these birds are said to resemble our common Quail, rather than the Ruffed Grouse. They do not jerk their tails in the manner of the latter bird, as they walk, nor are they known to burrow in the snow; but when they are pursued they invariably take refuge in trees, from which they cannot be readily made to fly. When driven from one place of refuge to another, they accompany their flight with a few clucks, and those sounds they repeat when they alight. When a flock thus alights, it may all be readily secured by a little precaution and pains. It is said that they are so unwary and regardless of the near presence of man, that when thus in the imagined shelter of a tree they will permit themselves to be approached, the whole flock shot, or even knocked down with a stick. Sometimes they may all be taken alive, one after the other, by means of a noose affixed to the end of a long pole.

According to Audubon, the Canada Grouse indicate the approach of rainy weather by retiring to roost at an unusual time in the day, whenever a storm is impending. If observed to fly up to their roost at midday, it rarely fails to rain or snow before the evening; and if, on the contrary, they remain busily engaged in search of food until sunset, the night and the following morning are pretty sure to be fresh and clear.