124 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. 



and lighter grouse, nor are they alike in habits. The grouse 

 is a bird of great attachment to its mate. If, unlike the 

 eagle, he does not remain faithful to her until death decrees 

 a divorce, he yet keeps troth for a year and a day, doing some 

 share of domestic duties, and taking part in beating back 

 the pillaging hawks when they swoop down on the young 

 broods. The blackcock is a roisterer of different habits, with 

 affections so unstable that they only serve to make him 

 " daft " and contemptible to all respectable birddoni for a 

 few weeks in the spring. It is he who comes down in the 

 earliest mornings of the new year from his perch among the 

 pine branches where he retires overnight, to be out of 

 the way of prowling vermin, and to keep his body of which 

 he is very careful (the result of being a bachelor nine 

 months out of the twelve) out of the cold ; and, winging 

 his way through the thin mists of early dawn to some quiet 

 open spot, alights, and commences that ridiculous love dance 

 that has been so often described by naturalists and sportsmen. 

 How any reasonable gray-hen can admire such a strutting, 

 puffed up, and excitable wooer as he then shows himself to 

 be, it is difficult to understand ; . but doubtless she knows it is 

 all for her sake, and that, in the female mind, is excuse broad 

 enough, no doubt, to cover any folly. 



There every morning the cocks strut and crow, pacing 

 round in well-worn circles with every variety of style; now 

 and then fighting terrible combats with glossy black-armoured 

 rivals, who come at their challenge from other ridges and 

 slopes, and carry on the conflict before 



Store of ladies whose bright eyes 

 Kain influence, and adjudge the prize. 



But as soon as the frosts of winter have grown thinner on 

 the hill-tops, and no longer, even at earliest dawn, turn to 

 ice beads the dew on the burn-side bents, the blackcock re- 

 tires to sober bachelor life, and for the rest of the year attends 

 strictly to his own affairs ; in pleasant weather haunting the 

 highest ground he can find, and roaming hither and thither 



