I02 RECREATIONS OF A NATURALIST 



together in a Grouse drive, when a Blackcock would 

 fall to the first shot and immediately afterwards a 

 Grouse to the second barrel, I have long regarded 

 them as dwelling in harmony, although, in con- 

 sequence of the difference in their diet, they often 

 affect quite different ground at feeding time. Long 

 before Gray's work was published, Charles St John 

 wrote : " I do not consider that they at all interfere 

 with each other. The same description of ground 

 is not liked by both kinds of birds. The Blackcock 

 prefers rocky hillsides, with plantations, and boggy- 

 pieces of ground clothed with coarse grass and 

 different kinds of marsh plants ; while the Grouse 

 delights in wide, open tracts, where the heather is. 

 not too rank, and where there is plenty of young 

 heath, on the shoots of which they feed." But 

 although the Blackgame will not drive away the 

 Grouse, it is a fact that Pheasants will cause Black- 

 game to forsake their chosen haunts if introduced 

 in the coverts to which they are in the habit of 

 resorting. For this reason owners and lessees of 

 Grouse ground where Blackgame are also to be found 

 should think twice before they decide upon turning 

 out Pheasants in the coverts merely with a view 

 to make a variety in the bag during the shoot- 

 ing season. It is surely wiser to preserve the 

 Blackgame where they exist in a country that suits 

 them, and look for Pheasants later in the season in 

 coverts where there are no Blackgame to be 

 disturbed. 



A good day's Blackgame shooting presupposes 

 the presence of several guns, to be posted in likely 



