182 GAME BIRDS AND SHOOTING-SKETCHES 



believed to be such by more than one eminent orni- 

 thologist, The bird possesses all the points that such a 

 hybrid should have, the head and neck closely resembling- 



/ / O 



the head of an autumn hen Ptarmigan, and the tail and 

 tail-coverts being also alike, so that the bird is as likely 

 as not to be a genuine hybrid of the two species. This 

 bird was shot on the 1st of September 1878, by Mr. W. 

 Houston, a well-known veteran Highland sportsman. He 

 killed it on the Ptarmigan-ground above his house at 

 Kintradwill, Brora, Sutherland, as it was flying with a 

 covey of Grouse. Afterwards he sent it to Professor 

 Newton, of Cambridge, who placed it in the Museum of 

 that town. 



A very simple but highly ingenious trick was formerly 

 much used in the Highlands by poachers for the capture 

 of both Grouse and Ptarmigan. The device is well known 

 amongst poachers, but very few keepers, or even the lairds 

 themselves, are aware of its practice ; and although in 

 some parts of Ross-shire and Sutherland, when the snow 

 is sufficiently deep and the birds consequently hungry, 

 it is highly successful, and the chances of detection 

 are small, it is to be wondered that it is not oftener 

 practised. 



I first heard of this mode of capturing the birds from 

 my mother, who told me that, when a girl, she had often 

 seen the poachers in Glenfmlas thus catching Grouse ; but 

 it was with some difficulty that I got all the necessary 

 information from an old Highland poacher, well known in 

 the neighbourhood of Inverness, who thoroughly explained 

 it to me and described it in detail. On a well-stocked 

 Grouse-moor, during a hard winter, when the snow fell 



