RED GROUSE. 515 



often seen on the wall tops, and will remain there until an 

 intruder gets quite close to them if driving, as they take but 

 little notice of a passing cart ; yet a man walking across 

 the moor will flush every bird within hundreds of yards. 

 Tunstall refers to the habit of these birds perching on roofs 

 of cottages ; in the great storms of 1886 and 1895 they were 

 seen on the hawthorn hedges, and in January of the latter year 

 Mr. M. A. Horsfall of Hornby Grange, Northallerton, shot a 

 cock Grouse from the top of an oak tree. Many in the Bowes 

 district were also observed sitting in trees. 



Grouse are comparatively easy to rear by hand ; Mr. John 

 Thwaite, Moorland Cottage, Hawes, informs me that in 1865 

 he had seventeen birds so tame that they would feed out of 

 his hand and follow him wherever he went on the moors, 

 walking as long as they could, then rising and flying to over- 

 take him. He reared Grouse more or less every year from 

 i860 to 1870. One peculiarity of these birds is the extreme 

 pugnacity of the cocks, which appear to be absolutely without 

 fear, and will attack both dogs and men with the greatest 

 impetuosity. 



In Yorkshire the coveys are found packed by the first 

 week in August, and it is now the universal custom to 

 drive early in the season on all the principal moors. It is 

 still an unsettled question when shooting birds on the wing 

 was first practised in England. In the time of James I. 

 it was the custom to take game either by nets or with Hawks ; 

 and in a memorandum made by Wilson of Broomhead, the 

 antiquary of Broadfield, it is stated that the first person who 

 shot Grouse on the wing on these moors was a member of his 

 own family, who died in 1687, at the age of sixty-one (Hunter's 

 " Hallamshire, S. Yorkshire," Vol. ii. p. 183). Yarrell (" British 

 Birds," 1843, Vol. ii. p. 318) mentioned that Lord Strathmore's 

 keeper on the Teesdale moors was matched to shoot forty brace 

 on I2th August, and performed this feat with great ease, bag- 

 ging forty-three brace by two o'clock. At eight o'clock in 

 the morning, owing to fog, he had only killed three birds. 



The following letter addressed to Wm. Lipscombe, Esq., of 

 Beech Lawn, near Wakefield, gives probably the best account 



