212 BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS 



must inevitably do so in precise proportion as moor- 

 lands are "improved." The valleys of the North Tyne 

 and Reedwater, with their many subsidiary glens, are 

 their great strongholds in Northumberland. Probably 

 in no other part of the British Islands are they more 

 numerous. I cannot think that they were ever more 

 abundant than they are here at the present day. In 

 corroboration of this, I quote a bag made on November 

 4th, 1 90 1, on Chirdon Head, North Tyne, when in the 

 evening there were laid out exactly eighty birds. Of 

 these, forty-one were grouse and no less than thirty-nine 

 were blackgame — almost the whole of the latter 

 being blackcocks. Another record' — November 14th, 

 1902, on the Nunwick low moors, eighty-five grouse, 

 twenty-nine blackcocks, and a partridge. Never in my 

 life have I seen greater numbers of blackgame than on the 

 two days named — the packs of greyhens which swung 

 over the butts or along their line at times almost cover- 

 ing the face of the heavens. Both these moors belong 

 to Mr Allgood of Nunwick. 



It is right to add that in 1903 — the year following 

 that last quoted — blackgame were visited by a severe 

 epidemic, which swept them off in large numbers ; thus 

 on the same moor first alluded to, a bag of forty brace in 

 1903 was composed exclusively of grouse without a single 

 blackcock. This wide discrepancy, however, was not 

 entirely to be ascribed to disease, but was partly attribut- 

 able to the shooting taking place at an earlier date, viz., 

 September 14th, at which period (as fully explained 

 above), blackgame are partially absent from the higher 

 moors and temporarily frequenting the lower-lying lands. 

 Though I can recollect many instances of grouse-disease, 

 that year was the first, within my experience, when black- 



