328 BIRDS OF DUMFRIESSHIRE 
Grouse learned this habit from the Blackgame about the 
year 1810.* In the Dumfries and Galloway Courier of January 
10th 1837 we read of Grouse having attacked ' stooks,' and 
this is described as "somewhat unusual." Sir WiUiam Jardme 
wrote in 1842 : " The habits of the bird have considerably 
changed By the approaches of cultivation to the higher 
districts, and bv insulated patches of grain even in the middle 
of the wildest, the Grouse have learned to depend on the 
labours of the husbandman for his winter's food, and instead 
of seeking a more precarious subsistence, during the snow, 
of tender heath-tops or other mountain plants, they migrate 
to the lower grounds and enclosures, and before the gram is 
removed, find a plentiful harvest."! This practice of 
upland cropping has long since died out, and m the 
lowlands the harvest is usuaUy too soon garnered to aUow 
the Grouse to do much damage to it ; the migration, 
therefore, of which Sir WiUiam writes can now only be 
considered an autumnal visitation. 
In winter Grouse may frequently be seen perched msecurely 
in the thorn-bushes, seeking for any haws that may yet 
remain ; and in very severe weather they pack together 
and are then occasionaUy found in strange localities, as m 
1894-1895, when they visited and fed in the cottage-gardens 
at Wanlockhead in enormous packs. 
An old rhyme referring to the great extent of moorland- 
property in the county owned by the Duke of Buccleuch, ran : 
"If heather birnsj were corn o' the best, 
Buccleuch wad§ ha'e a bonnie grist.' H 
and to-day there are few better beats than those in Eskdale 
belonging to him. Lord Henry Scott writer me : We 
have frequently killed over three hundred brace of Grouse 
in the day on the Langholm moors in Dumfriesshire. 
* WilUam Laidlaw, Mag. Nat. Hist., 1837, Vol. L, p. 120. 
t Nat. Lib., 1842, Vol. XII., pp. 90, 91. 
J Stems of burnt heather. 
§ Would. 
fl The grain to be ground at the mill. 
