CAPERCAILLIE. 355 



uniform buff, and her breast is more profusely speckled than 

 that of the male. Young males resemble the female. The bill, 

 legs, and irides are brown. Length, 7 ins. Wing, 4-4 ins. 

 Tarsus, ri ins. 



Family TETRAONID.^. Grouse. 



Ground birds ; bill short, stout ; wings short, round ; tarsi 

 feathered ; toes four, hind toe small. 



Capercaillie. Tetrao urogalbis Linn. 



The handsome Capercaillie (Plate i) has more claim to be 

 called British than the Pheasant and Red-legged Partridge, for 

 though the present stock was introduced so recently as 1837, 

 the bird is indigenous, and in remote ages made excellent meals 

 for our ancestors, who left its bones amongst other evidences of 

 their feasts in ''kitchen-middens" and cave deposits. When it 

 vanished from the forests of England and Wales is unknown, 

 hut it lingered in Scotland and Ireland until Pennant's day, for 

 he saw a bird which had been killed in Inverness, and states 

 that the " Wood Grous," though rare, existed in Tipperary in 

 1760. Abroad the bird is a native of most European pine 

 forests, and it was from Sweden that the ancestors of the 

 present thriving Scottish birds were obtained ; from Perth, where 

 they were turned down, they have colonised the conifer woods 

 in all directions. 



The cock is a large, heavily built bird, with strong, curved, 

 whitish bill, grey-black dress, and legs feathered to the toes. 

 Across the breast is a metallic green gorget, and it was this, no 

 doubt, which caught the observant eye of Giraldus when, at the 

 end of the twelfth century, he states that "Wild Peacocks" 

 abound in the Irish woods. The hen is a smaller, much browner 

 bird, rather like a Grey Hen with a more rounded tail. Now 



