118 GAME BIRDS AND WILD FOWL. 



Among the natural enemies of the red grouse, 

 the hooded crow (corvus comix) holds a prominent 

 place. His depredations are committed during 

 the breeding season, and are of so wholesale and 

 destructive a character as to demand the especial 

 attention of the intelligent keeper. The pere- 

 grine falcon, it must be admitted, is an occasional 

 offender, but the number of full-grown birds, on 

 whom alone he condescends to prey, is as nothing 

 compared with the amount of silent mischief 

 perpetrated by the hooded crow. The ash- 

 coloured harrier, or moor buzzard (circus cerugi- 

 nosus) in former days, before the species had been 

 almost swept from the face of the land, might 

 now and then have been convicted of pouncing 

 upon a half-fledged poult, as he traversed the 

 heath in quest of food during his evening flight. 

 The golden eagle (aquila chrysaetos), when larger 

 prey is unattainable, will occasionally, but rarely, 

 stoop to truss so small a quarry as a grouse ; and 

 the sea, or white-tailed eagle (halicettus albicilld) 

 is even less frequently an offender, while the 

 destruction of these noble birds has caused an 

 unnatural increase in the number of mountain 

 hares * (lepus variabilis), a result, in the opinion 



* I am informed on good authority that, during a single 

 day in September, 1849, four guns killed, on a mountain near 

 Loch Ranoch, 574 hares. 



