78 TETRAONID^. 



Orkneys, where disease is unknown, and the winters are 

 open, was nearly 30 ounces. Unlike its Scandinavian con- 

 gener the Willow-Grouse, the Red Grouse seldom perches in 

 trees. Mr. H. Seebohm has only once seen one alight in a 

 wood after a flight, remaining for a short time with its wings 

 half expanded, and apparently not at all at its ease ; but Mr. 

 L. Lloyd cites (Game Birds of Sweden, p. 126) an instance of 

 several birds, unmistakably of this species, being observed 

 in an ash-tree on the edge of a moor in Ayrshire ; and Sir 

 John Crewe states (Gould's Birds of Great Britain) that on 

 one occasion not less than five brace were observed in an old 

 thorn-tree ; the autumn being the season when this habit is 

 most noticed, and the larch the tree preferred. They are 

 frequently seen to sit on dykes and stone-walls. 



The Red Grouse, like the Capercaillie and the Black 

 Grouse, will live and breed in confinement, and some have 

 become remarkably tame. Daniel mentions (Rural Sports) 

 that they ' ' had been known to breed in the menagerie of 

 the late Duchess Dowager of Portland, and that this was in 

 some measure efi'ected by her Grace's causing fresh pots of 

 ling or heath to be placed in the menagerie almost every 

 day. At Mr. Grierson's, Rathfarnham House, county of 

 Dublin, in the season of 1802, a brace of Grouse, which had 

 been kept for three years, hatched a brood of young ones. In 

 1809, Mr. William Routledge, of Oakshaw, in Bewcastle, 

 Cumberland, had in his possession a pair of Red Grouse 

 completely domesticated, and which had so far forgotten 

 their natural fodd as to prefer corn and crumbs of bread to 

 the tops and seeds of heath. The hen laid twelve eggs, 

 but from some cause was not sufi'ered to hatch them ; or, in 

 all probability, the young brood would have been equally as 

 tame as their parents." In 1811, a pair of Red Grouse 

 bred in the aviary at Knowsley ; the female laid ten eggs, 

 and hatched out eight young birds ; but these, from some 

 unknown cause, did not live many days. In 1866 a brood 

 was hatched in the gaol at Omagh, and other instances are 

 on record. 



Owing to preservation, and the reduction or extirpation of 



