NUPTIAL HABITS OF THE BLACKCOCK. 25 



come off. Two birds did, indeed, advance, in a slow way, and 

 stand front to front, with their heads down, but nothing came 

 of it ; they did not make a pass. The little actual fighting 

 which I have hitherto seen, and which has amounted to a few 

 half-hearted passes and jumps against one another, has been 

 when no hens were present. Such courting of the hens as now 

 took place was the same as on previous occasions. The cock 

 walked beside, or round, the hen, tilting himself in the way I 

 have described, but springing, or " dancing," made no part of 

 such display. The flying about the ground, indeed, was con- 

 tinued, on and off, by the cocks, the hens — some three or four 

 in number — being also there ; but it did not seem specially 

 addressed to them. On the contrary, whenever a cock went 

 specially to a hen there was nothing of it. 



After awhile, another hen flew first into a small tree in the 

 vicinity, then into the arena, and, later, another flew from there 

 into such a tree, where she sat looking about. Things seemed 

 only, as yet, beginning, and everything pointed to an interesting 

 morning's observations, when, from the ridge where I generally 

 watch, a shot was fired, and all, of course, was at an end. 

 Happily no bird was hit — at least none seemed to be. It was a 

 long stupid shot, having no other effect than to put an end to 

 the interesting scene I was watching. There is no one to enforce 

 the game-laws here and, for aught I know, it is the same all 

 over Sweden. Owing to there having been nothing, day after 

 day, I had come later than usual, and, finding the birds on the 

 ground, sat down, without crossing it, in a place from which I 

 had, perhaps, a better view. Had I been on the ridge, however, 

 the shot might not have been fired. These are the kind of 

 things that make the true field naturalist hate a gun ; the bang 

 of it, too, vulgarises everything — all poetry goes out of nature. 



All now was over, for though the birds showed a good deal of 

 disposition, in another half-hour, to resume their courtship, yet 

 the shot had made them wild and unsettled. They flew about, 

 both males and females, settling in different trees, rookling and 

 " tchu-whai-ing," and one or two came down, here and there, 

 but soon flew up again. One settled in a small fir, some twenty 

 paces from where I sat, and rookled. The note commences with 

 a "kroo, kroo, kroo," or "roo, roo, roo," and then comes the 



