CHAPTER XXVL 



PTARMIGAN and CAPERCAILZIE. 



OF the three divisions of the United Kingdom, Scotland 

 alone is any longer able to boast the ptarmigan among its 

 game-birds, and even there it is only the more northern 

 part which can count the bird as its own. It is annually 

 becoming scarcer, or rather more limited in the range of 

 uplands it frequents, consequent upon the progress of 

 stock-keeping among the mountain parts it haunts. As far 

 as preserving goes, it is beyond control, for although far 

 from possessing the wildness and fear of man of the Red 

 and Black Grouse, it brooks no encroachment upon its 

 domains. Hence the chief requisite is to guard its haunts 

 from intrusion and disturbance in order to secure the 

 remnant of the race, for the birds appear to be well able to 

 cope successfully with their natural enemies, of which 

 they have but few in the localities they frequent. 



The natural history of the ptarmigan is of considerable 

 interest, chiefly by reason of the change of colour which 

 comes over it prior to the approach of winter, when it 

 assumes, in place of its summer plumage, which mostly 

 resembles that of the Grey-Hen, one of almost pure white- 

 ness a phenomenon which we further see in the Mountain 

 Hare, the stoat, &c., and which is of use in affording the 

 bird or animal so characterised greater immunity from the 

 extremes of cold associated with the exposed regions it 



