90 



BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS. 



outskirts of a straggling birch or pine wood with plenty of 

 rough ferny bottom, or in some rugged cleugh where a little 

 tumbling hill-burn has cut itself a deep tortuous ravine, 

 whose steep rocky sides are overgrown with rank heather, 

 bog-myrtle, and bracken, and studded with stunted birch, 

 alder, and mountain -ash. They now become watchful and 

 wild, and are difficult to handle comprehensively ; the young 

 cocks being almost indistinguishable from old ones, and 

 having finer " tails." In point of numbers, one-half the 

 quantity one could get a fortnight or so ago should now be 

 considered a fair bag. 



The old Blackcocks at this season are still in the moult. 

 At the beginning of the season (August 20) few of the old 



YOUXG BLACKCOCK. (SHOT END OF BEPTEMRER.) 



cocks have the slightest vestige of a tail ; i.e., the short blood- 

 feathers of the nascent tail are entirely hidden by the upper 

 and under coverts which meet beyond them. At that period 

 they usually lie very close, skulking in beds of the heaviest 

 bracken, as though ashamed of their ragged condition. Now 

 and then one shoots an old Blackcock in August, which, 

 probably from backward condition or other cause, still retains 

 some, or even all, of the long curved tail-feathers of the 

 previous year, of course very worn and ragged. Such birds 

 are usually very large — three or four-year-old birds — but 

 they scale less than smaller tail-less old cocks. 



During what I may call the " stubble period," i.e., from 

 about the middle of October till towards the end of November 

 (varying of course according to the date of the harvest). 



