82 GAME BIRDS AND SHOOTING-SKETCHES 



Old sportsmen in the Black Isle and East Cromarty 

 will tell you that when they were boys it was not un- 

 common during the harvest-time to see the low grounds 

 swarming with birds, flocks of four or five hundred being 

 often seen. This is literally true, for sixty years ago that 

 was about the best district in Scotland, though now it 

 puzzles the shooting tenants there to get a few brace for 

 the table. Cultivation and drainage, to a large extent, 

 have worked their effects on the animals native to the 

 district, and the Blackcock is the chief sufferer. 



Till the end of October, Blackgame feed much on the 

 arable land, returning at sunset to the rough and unbroken 

 tracts, where they pass the night. Here, again, even 

 should the sexes have been together during the previous 

 day, they usually spend the night apart, the cocks sleep- 

 ing in the rough gorse and scrub that fringe the borders 

 of most moors, whilst the hens, after having resigned 

 their broods to the tender mercies of the world, can be 

 seen wending their way to some favourite spot regularly 

 every evening at the same time. I have timed birds thus 

 coming in to roost, and found they only varied a few 

 minutes, and have no doubt they were the same birds 

 each evening. These spots are generally broken peat- 

 hags where the heather is long and rank. 



Although terra firma is their natural sleeping-place, 

 Blackgame sometimes roost in firs. These are generally 

 single old cocks, or hens with broods. In the latter case 

 it is probably done as an additional safeguard against the 

 attacks of vermin. Greyhens are not demonstrative birds 

 as a rule, but to see one seated on the high branch of a 

 fir, glue-king away all she knows until her entire family 



