THE RED GROUSE 



LAGOPUS SCOTICUS 

 Cearc-fhbaoch, Eun fraoich, Eun ruadh (Gaelic). 



The one and only bird which Great Britain, and more 

 especially Scotland, can claim for her very own is the Red 

 Grouse, and for that reason alone it occupies an interesting 

 place among our bird population. The ancestry of the 

 Grouse is not known beyond doubt, but it is supposed 

 that the bird has its origin from a species— perhaps the 

 Ptarmigan, more probably the Willow Grouse— which 

 assumed a winter plumage of white, and that this winter 

 dress was gradually discarded owing to an absence of 

 snow during the winter months. If this be indeed the case, 

 the break-away from the Tarmachan must have occurred 

 in earliest times, since nowadays, as I have mentioned, the 

 birds interbreed extremely rarely, if indeed at all. 



In the present day, when the tendency amongst 

 ornithologists would appear to be toward breaking up 

 birds into as many sub-species as possible, the Grouse, 

 I venture to suggest, would offer a good field for these 

 scientific researches. In the case of the male bird at least 

 three forms— the red form, the black form, and the white 

 spotted form — are found, while the female, in addition to 

 showing the three above-mentioned types, produces a 

 buff-spotted race and a buff -barred race. 



It is not too much to say that the Red Grouse has 

 transformed Scotland during recent times, and I believe 

 that, at the present day, the grouse moors in the country 

 north of the Tweed have a value of not less than £1,000,000. 



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