Bain, Francis (1891) Birds of Prince Edward Island: Their Habits and Characteristics. Hazard and Moore, Charlottetown, P.E.|. 87 pp. A year after the publication of his Natural History of Prince Edward Island Francis Bain (b. 7842, d. 7894) published a small book on the birds of the island. About 752 species are listed, including many of the common forest birds, with notes on their behaviour and abundance. / include below only the extracts concerning two now extirpated forest species, i. e. the passenger pigeon and the spruce grouse, and the rare pi/eated woodpecker, which may have been extirpated from the island but has since made a return. Godfrey comments that ”although he made some errors, his intimate pen portraits, awareness of seasonal details, habitat preferences, and elusive little behaviour patterns indicates that he had considerable field experience”. Despite Bain ’s unequivocal statement that the spruce grouse occurred on the island Godfrey questions the validity of the record. REFERENCE: Godfrey, W. E. (1954) Birds of Prince Edward Island. National Museum of Canada, Bulletin No. 132: 155—213. . The great Black Woodpecker, or Logcock, is a lonely bird of the forest, but rarely seen P’leated now in the cleared state of our country. It is a powerful woodcutter, and the woodpecker, amount of chips that it will knock out of a decayed stump which it supposes to contain a meal of grubs, is something astonishing. [p. 54] passenger WILD PIGEON (Ectopistes migratoriusl. Only a rare straggler of this once abundant pigeon. and delicious species of game bird is now to be seen in our well-cultivated country. It is not the want of food, we think, but the destructive propensity of humanity which has frightened away the Pigeons. They were here in great numbers at the early settlement of the country, and they occasionally appear in large flocks in the neighboring Provinces. Ruffed grouse, Partndges — We have two speCIes of Grouse, the Canada Grouse, or Spruce Partridge, and the Ruffed Grouse, or Partridge. The first of these inhabits evergreen tracts and swamps, while the other frequents dry hardwoods and uplands. Both are quite common, particularly in less cultivated districts, where they feed on berries of heath plants and brambles in summer and on the seeds and buds of birches in winter. Spruce grouse. This muffled drumming of the Partridge, on dull, quiet spring days, is one of the most peculiar and weird undertones of wood-land scenes. Partridges nest on the ground, in a retired spruce thicket . ipp. 60-61] 218