Northern Observations of Inland Birds 281 



Generally speaking grouse start the day at their feeding 

 grounds — that is, on and about the patches of young 

 heather. They do not feed so heavily at this time of 

 the day as in the evening, and consequently are likely 

 to rise a little wild. Therefore, the sportsman who 

 really knows his moor confines his morning as far as 

 possible to the deepest of the young heather, in which the 

 grouse will squat much closer than in the newly-burnt crops. 



As the heat of the day comes on, the grouse generally 

 forsake entirely their feeding haunts, and make their way 

 to the lower bracken slopes or to the banks of burns, where 

 they seek the cover of the ferns and the bog myrtle, and 

 it is, therefore, during the late forenoon and the early 

 afternoon that one generally hears most complaints as 

 to the scarcity of birds. They seem entirely to have 

 forsaken the moor, but nevertheless good sport is available 

 if one searches in the right places for them. 



As the heat of the day begins to subside, the birds 

 dribble back to their feeding grounds, and it is in the 

 cool of evening that they take their heaviest meal. 

 Therefore, they sit closest and afford the best sport 

 towards the cool of evening, the time when most 

 sportsmen pack up and go home with thoughts of a 

 hot bath and dinner. 



I have, on more occasions than one, set out with a 

 keeper at four in the afternoon, and walked up as many 

 birds as we cared to carry between then and sundown, 

 and this indeed in a deer forest where the necessity for 

 walking hard and far was regarded as inseparable from 

 a good bag. 



It is specially noticeable, however, that grouse often 

 sit closer where they are very little preserved in the 

 deer forests, than they do on the cultivated moors. This 

 is probably because they are more troubled by hawks 

 and vermin of other kinds in the forests than on the 



