216 THE COMPLETE SHOT 



is probable that there is less advantage in keeping the birds 

 from seeking winter food elsewhere. They must needs go for 

 it below the heather belt, and this ground will not keep them 

 in the spring, as the lower moors undoubtedly keep a large 

 number of those grouse that in hard weather visit them from 

 higher moors. No doubt many half-starved grouse get killed 

 when they visit lower grouse, and arable, ground, but unless 

 the snow disappears very early in the spring the lowest moors 

 are always favoured by some visitors stopping to breed. For 

 them this is a change of blood, which possibly the higher eleva- 

 tion birds never do get. Be this as it may, there is always 

 some moor in a neighbourhood, just as there is a piece of 

 ground on nearly every shooting, that will at all times have 

 more grouse upon it than are bred there, except when birds are 

 too young to travel far. It is difficult to put a limit on these 

 winter movements, or to give any idea how far the birds may 

 not go for " black ground." 



This seems to depend a good deal upon the way the snow 

 comes and stops. It may be affirmed that no matter how far it 

 may be off them, if grouse can see black ground when their own 

 is under frozen snow they will go to it. This in turn may be 

 covered up, and then they will again go downwards. The late 

 Mr. Dunbar, who sublet most of Sir Tollemache Sinclair's 

 shootings in Caithness, told the author that he had known the 

 Caithness grouse driven to the seashore in hard weather, when 

 the heather was all covered with snow. It would be a most 

 excellent arrangement of Nature that the grouse go for food 

 wherever it is to be had, if it were left to Nature, but it is not. 

 People on the cultivated farms regard the arrival of the grouse 

 as a great day, in which Providence has sought them out for 

 a blessing, just as the Israelites in the Wilderness thought about 

 the quail, which were possibly merely seeking their own 

 migratory ends, like the starving grouse. Those on the lower 

 moors see increased numbers of grouse, and kill them, knowing 

 that if they do not somebody else will. So that the general 

 result of this migration is that the total stock of the whole 

 county, or country, is kept much lower than any sportsmen 



