RO STUOIOS 



CAPEKCAILLIE. 



THE SPORTSMAN'S BRITISH BIRDS 



Capercaillie In a book on British birds, written more expressly 

 (Tetrao upog-allus) ^° meet the needs of the sportsman and the amateur 

 rather than the requirements of the scientific orni- 

 thologist, it is specially fitting that we should commence with the 

 capercaillie, or capercailzie, as typifying the game-birds, or Gallinae, 

 which take their popular title as being the group of most importance 

 to the gunner. On the other hand, it is not to be supposed that the 

 selection of this group as the starting-point has been in any way made 

 in deference to its special interest for sportsmen. Quite the contrary, 

 for although it has been customary in works of the present nature to 

 commence with either the birds-of-prey or the perching-birds, modern 

 researches have tended to show that the game-birds form perhaps the 

 most generalised group in the entire class of birds, and consequently 

 nearly related to the ancestral stock from which a number of the more 

 specialised groups have taken origin. They are therefore eminently 

 suited to form the starting-point for a systematic account of the birds 

 of the British Islands. Apparently, indeed, the game-birds are 

 intimately connected with the ostriches and their allies, by means of 

 that remarkable group of South American birds known as tinamus, 

 which lay such beautifully glazed blue or purple eggs. 



