THE FOOD OF THE RED GROUSE 85 



plant is throwing off its winter sleep and bursting into appetising 

 young buds. 



Just as the first flush of early pasture is more nourishing 

 than the later growth, the first heather shoots of spring probably 

 contain a larger percentage of nutritive food than at any other 

 time of the year, and it is doubtless due to this cause that Grouse 

 make such rapid growth in size and strength between the date 

 of hatching in May, and the opening of the shooting season 

 some ten or twelve weeks later. 



It is in the month of May also that the young heather plants 

 first begin to appear on the black ground where the old heather 

 has been burned. The length of time that elapses between the 

 date of burning and the growth of the new heather varies. 

 If the roots are not too old, and have not been destroyed by 

 the fire, the new growth will spring from them within a year ; 

 on some ground this always occurs. If, however, the roots 

 have been burnt out, or are too old to send forth new shoots, 

 the ground must lie waste for years, until a fresh growth of 

 heather springs from wind-blown seed or from the seed lying 

 dormant in the soil. 1 



It is usual to suppose that the first shoots of the young 

 heather as they appear above the ground are greedily eaten 

 by Grouse. Observation has shown that this view is not 

 strictly correct, for the adult birds will never feed on the imma- 

 ture plant so long as they can find plenty of close-growing 

 heather of the type described on p. 83. This is fortunate, 

 for otherwise the first growth might be very severely checked 

 on a moor carrying a heavy stock of birds. Sheep, on the 

 other hand, are very fond of the tender young shoots, and are 

 often most destructive to seedlings which have not had time 

 to secure a firm roothold. 



While the adult Grouse does not eat the very young 

 heather, there is no doubt that the chicks prefer it to 

 the shoots of the more mature plant ; but the amount 

 eaten by them in the days of their infancy is so small that 



1 Vide chap. xii. p. 352. 



