Heath Hen

In August 2010, NPR's "Morning Edition" featured a story detailing the hunt for and subsequent location of John James Audubon's first drawing sold for commercial purposes.  Robert Peck, a curator at Philadelphia's Academy of Natural Sciences, and Eric Newman, historian and numismatic scholar, found the image of a Heath Hen, described by Audubon in his diary in 1824 as painted for a New Jersey banknote.

Today, both the Heath Hen, a small grouse, and the banknote, a $3 bill, are extinct, despite efforts through the years to replenish the bird.                                                                                        

According to a "Spotlight" article written by David S. Wilcove and published by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the Heath Hen was "so abundant that servants allegedly pleaded with their employers not to be fed them more than a few times a week."

By the mid-1800s, according to Wilcove, the species could be located only on the island of Martha's Vineyard, and by 1896 the population numbered fewer than 100.  When that number had dropped to 50 by 1908, a refuge for the Heath Hen was established.

Initially successful in rebounding from near extinction, their numbers reached 2,000 birds by 1915. But then in 1916, a fire burned much of their habitat, and an unusually severe winter along with an invasion of Northern Goshawks dropped the population to fewer than 150. Finally, a disease, probably spread by domestic poultry, diminished the population to two Heath Hens by the late 1920s and the last bird was seen in 1932.

By Judy Baca

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