CAUSES OF MORTALITY IN THE RED GROUSE 181 



droppings of Grouse when fed on corn, and they will find them similar to 

 tar, but rather browner in colour." ^ Such droppings are not so abnormal 

 as Colquhoun believed, coming as they do direct from the cteca ; but they 

 are full of the ova of Trichostrongijlus, and are thus a menace to the health 

 of other birds frequenting the same feeding grounds. 



Low ground such as this in southern Perthshire must thus have a tendency 

 to become thoroughly infested with the eggs and larvEe of threadworms, as 

 well probably as with the eggs and cyst-bearing hosts of the tapeworms. 

 The higher ground on the other hand has a tendency to get rid of these 

 eggs and larvae by natural drainage at the expense of the lower ground. Every 

 spate must wash down millions of nematode larvse from the higher to the 

 lower ground, where often there is little natural drainage, and the artificial 

 drainage is inadequate. 



Turning now to the dangers and risks attendant upon the natural processes 

 of production and moulting, we find that the exigencies of courtship, mating, 

 and moulting in the male, of moulting, the laying of eggs, and the Riskgof 

 hatching out and rearing of a brood of chicks in the female, tfoj™'^"''' 

 constitute the sequence of a taxation which bears heavily upon the processes. 

 Grouse. It is worth while to look at them in detail to see to what extent each 

 may fairly be burdened with responsibility. 



If an inquiry is made into the cock bird's life he will be found engaged in 

 constant vigilance and warfare from the time of pairing, generally about the 

 end of February or March, onwards for a month or two at least. The 

 battles are more bloody and more disastrous to the weaklings than among 



cocks 



is generally supposed, and many of the half-starved and parasite- 

 infected cocks, the so-called cases of "disease" found dead along the burns, 

 have really been killed in fighting. It is a fact, testified by more than one 

 reliable gamekeeper, that two or more healthy cocks will sometimes set upon 

 and kill a weakling before they settle their own dispute ; and of the urgency of 

 their own dispute the following quotation by Macphersou in the Fur and 

 Feather Series aff'ords a good example. He quotes a Perthshire keeper, who 

 " saw two male Grouse engaged in combat, so completely blinded by fury were 

 the birds that they dashed against the wall of a stone building, one of them 

 killing himself with the impetuosity of his flight." " In the same work 



1 Colquhouu's Pamphlet, pp. 29, 30. 



2 Macpherson, Fur and Feather Series, " The Grouse " p. 32. 



