52 THE GROUSE IN HEALTH AND IN DISEASE 



to understand when the prevalence of Strongylosis is fully 

 grasped. No bird is safe from the nematode infestment, and 

 we have now reason to believe that the majority of cock birds 

 are so badly infested that they are forced to defer the moult 

 which in the hen takes place before nesting begins. It is, 

 therefore, obvious that between March and June there will be 

 every stage of good or bad leg and foot-feathering from the 

 newly acquired thick, white winter stocking of the sick cock, 

 and the naked featherless clean moulted leg and foot of the 

 really healthy male bird in June. In July, again, the healthy 

 cock bird will be found beginning to produce white feather 

 tips over the legs and feet. 



In July the general appearance of the healthy cock is much 

 lighter in colour-tone, and much more broken and mottled 

 in pattern-character than that of the same bird in the winter. 

 The claws are in many cases now ready to be shed, and the 

 primaries, secondaries, and tail feathers are in moult. Some 

 six or eight new clean-grown primaries are often to be found 

 in July, and the long tail coverts are broad-barred buff and 

 black. 



In August the cock Grouse has, of course, the appearance 

 of full summer or autumn plumage, but it requires very little 

 examination to see that he has already begun to put on feathers 

 of the winter plumage. He now rapidly sheds the old feathers 

 of the last winter's plumage which remained throughout the 

 summer upon his breast and abdomen, and replaces them with 

 the exceedingly handsome narrow cross-barred red or brown 

 or blackish feathers of the coming winter plumage. There is 

 no second moult or replacement of these feathers of the breast 

 and abdomen in the cock. Once in the year is enough 

 for this special area, and the feathers that " carry through " 

 are wholly of the winter plumage. They are often broadly 

 tipped with white. The chin feathers which survived with 

 those of the breast and abdomen are now also replaced by new 

 ones. It is noticeable that in the Ptarmigan it is also the white 

 feathering of the chin and of the breast and belly, as well as 



