MAY ON THE MOORS 75 



moist and ill-drained, where the drier slopes are clad with 

 bent and bracken, the hollows with rush, sedge, and 

 natural wood of alder, birch, and scroggy saugh. 1 



To define the relative distribution of grouse and 

 blackgame in spring, the former may be said to nest at 

 the highest, the latter at the lowest, zones of their 

 respective areas. Grouse .in spring seek the higher 

 ground for nesting ; and in autumn (so far as they move 

 at all) tend to shift downwards. Blackgame breed 

 chiefly in the lowest ground of moorland character ; and 

 as the young acquire strength in autumn, tend to climb 

 outwards to the higher fells. 



Greyhens are often lamentably careless in their 

 choice of a site ; one nest was in a tuft of rushes 

 immediately adjoining a stile, another on a bank thrown 

 up to form a sheep-washing pool on a burn ; and they 

 frequently nest alongside a footpath, or open "green 

 lane," where men and dogs pass daily. One nest in a 

 young plantation at Houxty contained three partridges' 

 eggs, as well as seven of its original owner. All ten were 

 hatched. 



In 1877 we had deep snow in May. On the 4th we 

 shot some fieldfares, and they remained about for a 

 week later ; though then almost due to be nesting in 

 Norway. 



May 7. — A single Golden-eye duck still lingers on the 



1 I cannot find the word " saugh " in the dictionary ; but it is one of 

 the commonest shrubs in the north. It is one of the willows, more of a 

 bush than a tree. Were cattle and sheep removed (personally I wish 

 they all lived in our colonies), a considerable area of the Borderland 

 would, within a dozen years, become a jungle of saugh and silver-birch, 

 rowan, willow, and hazel-scrub. There is a station on the North British 

 line, a few miles from here, called "Saughtree" — amidst the green hills 

 of Liddesdale. 



