CAPERCAILLIE 115 



Scotland was without this noble game-bird. The first 

 movement towards its revival, of anything like adequate 

 proportions, was that instituted by the late Sir Thomas 

 Fowell Buxton, who in 1836 wrote to Mr. L. Lloyd, a 

 well-known sportsman and naturalist resident in Sweden, 

 requesting him to procure a sufficient number of birds 

 for turning down upon the estate of Lord Breadalbane 

 at Taymouth Castle. Sir Fowell Buxton went so far as 

 to send out to Sweden his head-keeper, and Mr. Lloyd 

 having set about the accomplishment of his onerous com- 

 mission with commendable zeal, some forty-eight caper- 

 caillie were at length safely transported from Sweden to 

 Scotland. Five years later, October u, 1841, Lord 

 Breadalbane wrote to Mr. Lloyd to tell him that the 

 capers had thriven most excellently, so that by that time 

 there were a goodly number of these birds on his estate 

 in Perthshire. Twenty years later Lord Breadalbane 

 modestly computed the offspring of these imported 

 birds at fully one thousand. About that period, or soon 

 afterwards, his Lordship's head-keeper, in a letter to a 

 friend, estimated them at double that number. To-day 

 capercaillies are a welcome and most attractive feature 

 on many of the great sporting estates of Perthshire and 

 the adjacent counties, in which quarter these noble birds 

 are now both numerous and, to all appearance, thoroughly 

 re-established. Thus the names of Buxton, Lloyd, and 

 Breadalbane deserve to be remembered for all time by 

 Scottish sportsmen. 



In its natural habitat, the birch and pine-forests of 

 our hilly northern counties, the capercaillie subsists, in 

 great measure, upon the buds and tender shoots of larch 

 and pine, varied with a diet of berries and fruits, of 

 grubs and insects, in their season. Although inhabiting 



