38 THE GAME BIRDS AND WILD FOWL 



Time during which the Black Grouse may be taken.— 



August 2oth to December loth; except in Somerset, Devon, and 

 New Forest, where it is from September ist to December loth. 



Habits. — The Black Grouse is a bird of the trees, but not 

 quite so much of a forest species as the Capercaillie. It loves 

 wild, broken country on the border of the moors, birch and fir 

 plantations, and the romantic hollows below the level plateaux of 

 heath and ling, where the ground is clothed with bracken and 

 bramble, strewn with rocks, and traversed by dancing streams 

 which sometimes widen out into expanses of rush-grown bog and 

 cotton-grass. In our southern counties favourite haunts of this 

 bird are the wild commons and small isolated tracts of moorland, 

 where pine woods are in close proximity, and plenty of under- 

 wood and trees are to be found. The Black Grouse is extremely 

 partial to districts where water abounds, either swampy ground, 

 or pools and streams. It is a skulking, shy, and wary bird, 

 seldom being seen until it is flushed, either from the ground or 

 the trees ; and even when feeding on the bare hillsides, which it 

 often does, some distance from the plantations, it is ever on the 

 alert, and runs and conceals itself the moment it is alarmed. I 

 have seen Black Cocks take refuge in clumps of rushes growing 

 on the hillside, running from one tuft to another until the 

 plantation was reached. The flight of the Black Grouse is 

 powerful and rapid, but the bulk of the bird seems to lend it a 

 laboured character. The Black Cock, except during the moulting 

 season in July and August, spends much of his time in the trees, 

 and always prefers to roost in a tree, but the Gray Hen is more 

 of a ground bird. I have often remarked the partiality of this 

 species for tall bracken in autumn ; and at that season it also 

 wanders from the covers to the stubbles. During long-continued 

 snowstorms it sometimes burrows into the drifts for shelter. The 

 food of the adult Black Grouse is almost exclusively vegetable. 

 In summer the seeds of rushes and the tender tops and leaves of 

 ling and heath and other plants are its favourite fare ; in autumn, 

 grain and wild fruits and berries are partaken of; whilst in 

 winter, willow twigs, birch catkins, alder buds, and leaves of the 

 ling and heath are eaten. Black Game, like Red Grouse, always 

 seem bewildered and stupid during misty weather, and then often 



