Americanus for Cupido

Sad is the fate of a Last Survivor, the lone lingering member of a species. Mateless, childless, friendless, he can only sit and brood upon the fate that has left him in a world whence all his kind has vanished. Such a bitter fate is that of the heath-cock of Martha's Vineyard. Once his kind filled the woods from Maine to Virginia, but hunters' guns reduced their numbers to a single flock which found refuge on Martha's Vineyard. Forest fires decimated the flock until in 1927 there remained only eleven heath cocks, two heath hens. Next year only three birds were left. After Dec. 8, 1928, there was only one heath-cock in all Martha's Vineyard. Wary, he was seldom seen far from the scrub oaks where he "used," but occasionally observers saw him perform his kind's famed nuptial dance, though no mate was there to see it. More & more lonely he grew, began to boom (spread his feathers, inflate his sacs, dance) in places where no heath-cock had ever been known to boom before. Then he too disappeared and last summer Professor Alfred Otto Gross of Bowdoin College read his obituary before the American Game Conference. But suddenly he appeared again, sadder, more lonely than ever. Last week watchers on Martha's Vineyard heard him booming as of old.

Sportsmen rallied to his aid. It was not likely he would live long and some of his characteristics should be preserved for posterity. The Martha's Vineyard Rod & Gun Club voted to find him a mate, appealed to Professor Gross. Dr. Gross had recently returned from Wisconsin where he studied prairie chickens (Tympanuchus americanus), found them so similar to the heath-hen (Tympanuchus cupido) that no eye less sharp than an expert's could tell one from the other. Both are pinnated grouse. A prairie chicken, thought Dr. Gross, would make the heath-cock a very good mate indeed. The State of Wisconsin agreed to ship a few prairie chickens, New York sportsmen agreed to bear the cost; Dr. Gross agreed to choose the hen, to introduce it to the heath-cock's retreat. But there was no time to waste, he warned; the mating season was on and no one knew when the heath-cock might boom a last boom and boom no more.

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