182 GAME BIRDS AND SHOOTING-SKETCHES 



l^elieved to be sucli l)y more than one eminent orni- 

 thologist. The bird possesses all the points that suc-h a 

 hybrid should have, the liead and neck closely reseml)ling 

 the head of an autumn hen Ptarmigan, and the tail and 

 tail-coverts being also alike, so that the Ijird is as likely 

 as not to be a genuine hybrid of the two species. This 

 bird was shot on the 1st of September 1878, by Mr. W. 

 Houston, a well-known veteran Highland sportsman. He 

 killed it on the Ptarmigan-ground above his house at 

 Kintradwill, Brora, Sutherland, as it was flying with a 

 covey of Grouse. Afterw^ards he sent it to Professor 

 Newton, of Cambridge, who placed it in the Museum of 

 that town. 



A very simple but highly ingenious trick was formerly 

 much used in the Highlands l^y poachers for the capture 

 of l)oth Grouse and Ptarmigan. The device is well known 

 amongst poachers, but very few keepers, or even the lairds 

 themselves, are aware of its practice ; and although in 

 some parts of Ross-shire and Sutherland, when the snow 

 is sufficiently deep and the birds consecpiently hungry, 

 it is highly successful, and the chances of detection 

 are small, it is to be w^ondered that it is not oftener 

 practised. 



I first heard of this mode of capturing the l)irds from 

 my mother, who told me that, when a girl, she had often 

 seen the poachers in Glenfinlas thus catching Grouse ; but 

 it was with some difficulty that I got all the necessary 

 information from an old Highland poacher, well known in 

 the neighbourhood of Inverness, who thoroughly explained 

 it to me and described it in detail. On a well-stocked 

 Grouse-moor, durinoj a hard winter, when the snow fell 



