GAME BIRDS OF AMERICA
RUFFED GROUSE
BOB WHITE
WILD TURKEY
CANADA GOOSE
MALLARD
CANVASBACK
By EDWARD H. FORBUSH, State Ornithologist of Massachusetts
Author of “Useful Birds and Their Protection,” “A History of Game Birds, Wild Fowl, and Shore Birds,” etc.
YOUNG GROUSE
The young bird learning to perch above the reach of prowling enemies.
North America, when discovered by Columbus, probably contained more game birds than any other continent. The great falling off in the number of these birds in recent times has been accentuated by the extinction of the passenger pigeon and the Eskimo curlew, and the rapid disappearance of many others, among which are the whooping crane and the sandhill crane, great birds that are gradually being swept from the continent. The upland plover, formerly abundant in every suitable grassy region east of the Rocky Mountains, is now facing extinction, and its salvation is beyond hope, unless the regulations, protecting it at all times, recently made by the United States Department of Agriculture, under the Weeks-McLean law, can be enforced. The rails do not appear to have decreased in number quite so rapidly as have the shore birds; but from the king rail, the finest of them all, down to the sora they are much less numerous than in the early years of the last century.