THE FOOD OF THE RED GROUSE 91 



crops at all, perhaps from stress of weather, or more probably 

 because of excessive or deficient burning or an overstock of 

 sheep, or for some other less obvious reason. 



The mere fact that the crops of many birds contain old 

 heather is enough to prove that birds sometimes find great 

 difficulty in collecting a meal of wholesome food. The vast 

 majority of winter crops contain, as we have already said, 

 good dark green or dark reddish brown winter heather, sound 

 wholesome food with a minimum of dead woody tissue. But 

 now and again one finds a crop full of old woody growth of which 

 the food value must be very small. This is probably due to 

 the fact that the moor has been left long unburned, and that 

 all the heather within reach is old and rank. Or the moor may 

 have been over-burned from every point of view except that of 

 the grazing tenant. In such a case large tracts of young heather 

 are burned again and again, often by runaway fires, to bring 

 the land to grass and kill the heather. In this the grazing tenants 

 of parts of the borderland and of the north of England have 

 been very successful, and heather in many places is a thing of 

 the past, the moors being now almost all white land. Scattered 

 through this, where the tussocky grass has had its way for 

 many years, is a thin growth of useless straggling heather of 

 little value as food for bird or beast. 



For the purpose of drawing up Tables II. and III. two 

 hundred and eighty-seven specimens of Grouse were examined, 

 and the specimens were fairly evenly distributed over the months 

 from April 1906 to March 1907. The specimens represented 

 birds from no fewer than twenty-seven different counties, so 

 that the results may be regarded as conclusive, so far as concerns 

 the particular period under review. 



In case, however, of the period selected being abnormal, 

 Table IV. (p. 92) was prepared to show the crop contents for 

 two complete years, viz., 1906 and 1907. In this Table the 

 figures for the corresponding months are placed together, and 

 an average is struck for each month. It will be seen that these 

 averages show the same general tendencies as are seen in the 



