506 THE BIRDS OF YORKSHIRE. 



by the surrounding black flesh, seems rather a singular 

 circumstance. Commonly called in the north the White 

 Muscle. This is not found in the congenerous species of the 

 Cock of the Wood, or Red Grouse. The Black Cock is a 

 very rare bird in Yorkshire at present. Was assured by an 

 elderly gentleman, that he remembered them on our 

 neighbouring moors ; now a Phcenix or a Parrot might as well 

 be seen ; in short, except ifi a very few places, where they are 

 diligently guarded, they are rarely to be found in this or 



any of the Northern Counties Sometimes a few are 



found in wild boggy moors, where none can come at them. 

 (Tunst. MS. 1784, pp. 78-9.) " 



The Rev. Geo. Graves, the author of " British Ornithology " 

 (1813), noted the fact that " poachers take considerable num- 

 bers of Blackcocks by imitating the call of the hen-bird, 

 as many as fifty males being lured by this means in the course 

 of two days." R. Leyland, in 1829, remarked it was pretty 

 common near Sheffield, but odd individuals occasionally 

 strayed, and he had known examples killed in Wombwell 

 Wood and vicinity in 1829 ; and Dr. Farrar, in 1844, stated 

 it was naturalized on Bradfield Moors. Thomas Allis, in 

 his Report, also written in 1844, observed : 



Tetrao tetvix. Black Grouse J. Heppenstall says they are pretty 

 abundant in some woods near Sheffield, and that a female was taken 

 one evening last winter, about ten o'clock, in a street of the town ; 

 R. Leyland says two instances have come to his knowledge of the 

 female of this species having rambled so far from its native locality 

 as the neighbourhood of Heptonstall and Lightcliffe ; it is sometimes 

 met with near Hebden Bridge ; S. Gibson has a fine male shot there. 

 May 1842. 



The present status of the species is that of a resident, 

 limited in numbers, and very local in its distribution, being 

 restricted chiefly to the southern, western, and north-western 

 parts of the county, and, generally speaking, stationary or 

 decreasing in numbers. It still breeds in one or two localities 

 in the neighbourhood of Sheffield ; in the Holmfirth and 

 Penistone districts it has been introduced by Mr. Spencer 

 Stanhope, and a few pairs breed annually. In the Hebden 



