Black Grouse. 327 



of his song the Capercaillie is so taken up with his own melli- 

 fluous voice, and all his faculties are so absorbed with his vocal 

 performance, that he has no eyes nor ears for anything else ; and 

 it is then that the Norwegian sportsman, in somewhat unsports- 

 manlike fashion, as we think, taking advantage of his preoccu- 

 pation, hurries to the spot and shoots the unconscious singer.* 

 Young birds do not attain maturity until their third or fourth 

 year, nor are they then suffered to intrude on the playing-place 

 of the old birds, but are either driven away or, if they venture 

 to resist the attack of the old bird, a fierce battle^, not unfre- 

 quently attended with fatal results, ensues. 



126. BLACK GROUSE (Tetrao tetrix). 



This, too, is but a straggler to our county, though its visits 

 have been more frequent ; and from the undoubted fact that it 

 inhabits, though sparingly, the New Forest and other suitable 

 haunts in the neighbouring counties of Somerset and Hants, its 

 appearance here as a veritable wild bird may be more readily 

 acknowledged. The Rev. G. Marsh assured me that they were 

 occasionally met with in the Winterslow woods ; and I have a 

 notice of one killed near Redholn turnpike, on the edge of the 

 plain overlooking the vale of Pewsey, which came into the pos- 

 session of Mr. Lewis, of Wedhampton ; and Major Heneage has 

 a specimen which was killed near the Upper Lodge at Compton 

 Bassett in 1866. In South Wilts the Rev. A. P. Morres says 

 that they used to be met with on the downs around Ellesbourne 

 and Sutton and on Teffont Common ; and Mr. W. Wyndham, of 

 Dinton, writes that he has a pair of local specimens in his col- 

 lection, both killed by his grandfather, of which the male bird 

 was shot on the borders of the parishes of Ellesbourne and 

 Sutton Mandeville on December 1st, 1818, and the female at 

 Langford Down just one year later, viz., on December 1st, 1819. 

 These were supposed to be the last native birds of this species 

 in the county ; but still occasionally one strays over from the 

 New Forest, and Mr. Wyndham's keeper shot a hen bird at 

 See my account of this in the Zoologist for 1850, pp. 2944 5. 



