98 NOTES ON 1HE BirDS OF DUMFRIESSHIRE. 
The final Report of the Committee of Inquiry on Grouse 
Disease was published in August, 1911, and it would be 
impossible here to attempt to show how exhaustively this 
monograph has been compiled. ‘‘ Grouse disease ’’ has been 
found to be due to the ravages of a threadworm, 
Trichostrongylus pergracilis, which infests the ceca. It is 
obviously difficult to cope with diseases of wild birds, but it 
is demonstrated clearly how important it is to keep moors in 
good condition by considerate and systematic burning; and 
also, how dangerous it is to attempt to keep more Grouse on 
a moor than the ground will carry in early spring, at which 
period the food supply is likely to be at its lowest. The 
variety of plumage in the Red Grouse is dealt with fully in 
the Committee’s Report. In Dumfriesshire the males would 
appear to be for the most part of the red form, though the 
white-spotted form is occasionally met with. Of the females, 
the commonest form is the buff-spotted, though the red form 
is at times found. 
A white Grouse was shot, out of a covey of six or seven 
normal birds, on the Burnfoot Estate (Ewes) on 16th August, 
1875.18 On 30th August, tori, a Grouse marked 
LHS—1911—91 was shot at Tinnis Hill (Ewes),!® but it has 
never been ascertained by whom this bird was marked or 
whence it came. 
On 16th September, 1921, a hen Grouse which was well 
nourished but which had a curiously deformed beak, was shot 
at Auchenhessnane (Tynron). The deformity was one of 
those very rare cases of congenital cleft lower-mandible, 
similar to the cleft lower-lip occasionally found in children. 
Red Grouse have often been recorded as sitting on 
thorn-bushes and the like but I think it is remarkable that, 
near Capenoch on 25th September, 1922, I shot an old cock 
Grouse from the top of a Scots-fir. The tree was about 
thirty feet high and was on the edge of a plantation adjoin- 
ing a strip of moor. The Grouse must have been sitting on 
its unusual perch for some time before my attention was 
drawn to it by its ‘“‘ crow ’’ and I shot it as it flew off the 
tees 
166 The Field, 2nd October, 1875, p. 372. 
167 The Scottish Naturalist, 1912, p. 236. 
