288 Northern Observations of Inland Birds 



to pick out the old cocks with any degree of certainty. 

 It may be taken, however, that the father of a covey is 

 the first to rise, and generally the first to pass over the 

 butts, so that, by making a rule of shooting the leader 

 one is fairly certain to achieve the desired end of preventing 

 a superabundance of old males. 



Grouse are, of course, monogamous, like partridges 

 and ptarmigan, though blackgame, pheasants, and caper- 

 caillie are polygamous.- The hen grouse is an excellent 

 mother, and while it is the work of the male bird to 

 mount guard near his brood, ever on the look-out for 

 danger, with one eye on the heavens while the other 

 scans the slopes, the hen bird creeps about among the 

 roots of the ling with her brood. At the slightest suspicion 

 of danger, she gathers her chicks under her wings and 

 keeps them there till the coast is clear. 



Some little time ago I peered over the edge of a low 

 crag in the Lammermuirs, and saw a hen grouse with a 

 large brood of chicks directly below me. The heather 

 was thin, and she and her brood were amusing them- 

 selves on a sandy patch, the chicks hunting insects while 

 the mother sprawled luxuriously in her sandbath. Presently 

 I discovered the cock bird seated on a boulder much lower 

 down the slope. He too, had failed to notice me, but 

 when a lesser black-backed gull appeared, gliding idly 

 down the glen at a height of perhaps two hundred feet, 

 the cock uttered a warning croak, whereupon his mate 

 at once crept into the deep heather, calling her chicks 

 about her. There, no doubt, she sheltered them under 

 her wings, and not till the black-backed ruffian had 

 disappeared from view did they return to the open. 



THE END 



Trinttd by Taylor Garnett B'vam & Ce., (iManchater . 



