104 BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS. 



they cauuot possibly have heard for many months, and the 

 Plover's note always appeared to me absolutely incapable of 

 imitation. The Starling's memory must be as good as are 

 his powers of mimicry. 



The Grey-backed Crows are at this season most inimical 

 to sport. They hunt the heather as regularly as a setter, 

 and invariably put up every Grouse they find, checking their 

 flight whenever they come over a game-bird, apparently to 

 see if it happens to be wounded. In this way they are 

 sometimes the means of one's recovering a wounded Grouse, 

 but far more often they have cleared a whole hillside of 

 moorgame which one had laboriously driven in, in hopes of 

 filling the bag. Why unwounded Grouse or Blackgame 

 should lly from these Crows is not apparent — for the latter 

 are quite incapable of injuring them — but they invariably 

 do so ; and even Eooks make feints at Grouse, which always 

 put them up. 



The latter birds (Rooks) are extremely fond of a feast 

 upon Grouse when procurable, and daily search the sides of 

 the old coach-road which crosses the Border moors on its 

 way from Newcastle to Edinburgh, and along which a tele- 

 graphic line is stretched. This line at present consists of 

 nineteen wires — a perfect trap for birds, and the damage it 

 causes to bird-life is incredible. I have heard it estimated 

 by farmers and shepherds (and believe they are not far wrong) 

 that more Grouse meet their deaths annually from these mis- 

 chievous wires than are killed by all the shooters on the 

 moors around. The nineteen wires cover so much space, 

 and being stretched at exactly the usual height of the flight 

 of game-birds (and especially of their morning flight, when 

 in the indistinct light the wires are wholly invisible) that 

 they cannot fail in their destructive work, and occasionally 

 a pack is cut down by wholesale. It should be remembered, 

 too, that this destruction is going on at all seasons of the 

 3'ear. It is no exaggeration to say that the roadside is 

 at certain seasons strewn with remains. Besides Grouse, 

 I have picked up Blackgame, Partridge, Curlew, Golden 

 Plover, Snipe, Peewits, and other birds. Every morning at 

 break of day come out the marauding bands of Rooks from 



