176 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



AN OBSERVATIONAL DIARY on the NUPTIAL HABITS 

 of the BLACKCOCK (TETRAO TETRIX) in 

 SCANDINAVIA and ENGLAND. 



By Edmund Selous. 



(Part II. England.) 



(Continued from p. 56.) 



May 5th, 1908. — Arrived yesterday, and was driven to one 

 of the Blackcock leks, in the afternoon, by the keeper, who 

 arranged to call me at my lodging, at 3, the next morning. He 

 was late, however, so that we did not get to the place quite in 

 time. There were some four or five to half a dozen male birds 

 there, and as I came up, now in a drizzling rain, I could see 

 them springing at one another. In getting into place, behind 

 one of several thinly scattered thorn-bushes, I probably dis- 

 turbed the birds, who went up, and flew to a little way off, but 

 as they returned, very shortly, and remained upon the open, 

 somewhat swampy, space chosen by them, for more than an 

 hour, seeming quite at their ease all the time, they could not, I 

 think, have been much alarmed, even when they went off. But 

 there was, now, no further fighting, or, indeed, any activity at 

 all, the birds merely standing quietly, without doing anything, 

 which I attribute, and hope may be attributed, to the rain, 

 which had come on more and more, nor was there any inter- 

 mission in it, till the meeting broke up. This morning, then, 

 was quite a failure. 



May 6th. — Started off, in the dark, on my cycle, about 2.15. 

 Yesterday I had ridden the keeper's horse, for half the way, 

 going turn and turn about with him, but pushing the cycle up 

 the long steep hill which has to be surmounted in order to get 

 to the place — on the side of a higher hill — was a different 

 matter. However, I was on the spot, and seated behind the 

 gorse-bush I had chosen, yesterday, some little time before 4, 



