Northern Observations of Inland Birds 285 



Personally, I much prefer the wilder sport of walking 

 up game, when the pleasure of working one's dogs, the 

 necessity for knowing something about the game one is 

 after, and the dehghts of an ever-changing panorama, 

 are added to the necessity for good marksmanship. We 

 do not always realize the part scenery' plays in our devotion 

 to certain pastimes, and it is doubtless owing largely 

 to the grandeur of the scenery which accompanies grouse 

 shooting that the pursuit of the red bird of the heather 

 is regarded as the elixir of British sport. 



So much has been written during recent years on the 

 subject of grouse disease, that many sportsmen have 

 become somewhat wearied of it ; far more serious is 

 the migration of grouse from certain areas which seem 

 entirely favourable to their existence. There is no 

 accounting for their departure, which has caused much 

 consternation among land proprietors on the west coast, 

 and even in Ayrshire and Dumfriesshire. We know 

 that it is a peculiarity of the grouse family suddenly 

 to desert certain areas to which they may have been 

 partial for a number of years, and that red grouse are 

 not peculiar in this respect. Franklin's grouse of the 

 Rocky [Mountains migrate in just the same way, and the 

 Indians will tell you that though for some years these 

 birds may exist in thousands along certain high slopes, 

 they are apt to vanish suddenly and not to return for a 

 number of seasons. Indeed one finds certain localities 

 named after them, indicating that they were once abundant 

 there, but where to-day not a single specimen can be found. 



Grouse possess most remarkable powers of recovery. 

 I remember some years ago seeing cartloads of dead and 

 dying birds picked up on a certain moor where disease 

 was raging, to be loaded into the panniers and buried. 

 In due course the disease ran its course, and two years 

 later the same moor produced a greater head of birds 

 than ever previously. 



