MOORLAND BIRDS 73 



Partridges haunt the grass-moors to a considerable 

 height, and old cock pheasants of wild and wary habits dwell 

 in the wooded dingles that mount between the bare shoulders 

 of the hills. Their cry blows over the open crests with a 

 distant association of oak leaves and mossy shadows. Where 

 a mantle of alders and birches clings loosely to the sides 

 of the hills, just above the highest oat and barley fields, 

 black game harbour on the edge of the desert and the sown. 

 They are distinctly birds of the rough moorland scrub, and are 

 midway in habit between the capercailzie, which haunts the 

 pine-woods, and the red-grouse of the open moors of heather. 

 The nearest relative of the red-grouse is the Norwegian riper 

 or willow-grouse, which in summer has its grouselike plumage 

 conspicuously splashed with white, and in winter turns white 

 almost completely, and is then common in the poulterers' 

 shops under the guise of 'ptarmigan.' Heather is scarce in 

 Norway, and the chief haunt of the willow-grouse is among 

 the dwarf willows and little dark green creeping birches 

 which clothe miles of the mountain slopes. Our grouse is 

 the willow-grouse adapted to a milder climate, where snow 

 is only intermittent on the slopes which it haunts, and the 

 white has accordingly almost vanished from its plumage. It 

 survives only in the white spots on the birds from certain 

 localities. Grouse pick up part of their living from many 

 moorland plants, and a few insects ; but the staple of their 

 diet consists of shoots of heather — not the bell heather, 

 which is included among the mere pickings, but the paler 

 starry ling. It is curious that there is apparently no trace 

 of its ever having existed in a natural state on the great 

 heaths which cover wide tracts of north-west Germany, 

 especially as it now appears to be doing well in several 

 places where it has been introduced into both Germany and 

 Belgium. Not even the little dark heather linnets, or twites, 



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