320 ENGLISH BIRD LIFE 



speed, but these appear to use their wings only to 

 move from place to place. They never gambol in 

 the air; they indulge in no turnings and gyrations 

 from mere love of flying. When they spring from 

 the heather, they can only rise by beating the air 

 with immense rapidity, and they alight heavily, the 

 dowuAvard stretched feet striking the ground first, 

 when they run for several yards to exhaust the 

 impetus of their descent. Once fairlv in flight, how- 

 ever, they proceed by a series of rapid wing-beats, 

 followed by long gliding movements. When 

 gliding (unlike the swallows and the hawks), thev 

 appear to have no power to rise, the line of their 

 fight being horizontal, or, more usually, tending 

 downwards. 



Of the four British members of the Grouse family, 

 the Capercaillie, the Ptarmigan and the Black and 

 Red Grouse, the first appears to have become 

 extinct in these islands a century or more ago, and 

 now owes its existence as a British bird to the fact 

 of its reintroduction from Sweden in 1837. It is 

 by far the largest of its race, and differs from its 

 congeners inasmuch as in place of the open moor- 

 land or mountain top, it finds a home in the deepest 

 pine forests. 



It is satisfactory to learn that, after many 

 failures to re-establish this interesting species in 

 its ancestral haunts in Scotland, it appears now to 

 be firmly settled, its range having extended from 

 Perthshire to Loch Lomond, East Stirlingshire and 

 Fife. 



