6 The Natural History of British Game Birds 
and an odd male to stay and breed. During fifteen years in which I lived in the 
haunts of Capercaillie in Perthshire I have seen, when shooting amongst the low-lying 
woods of the Tay and Earn valleys, numbers of Capercaillie, nearly all hens. Visits 
to the high grounds and old parts of Dunkeld, Ladywell, Logierait, Crieff, Rohallion, 
&c, at the same season, have convinced me that the old males had not changed their 
habitat, and were still up on the hills amongst the tall timber. In consequence, a 
heavy toll is taken of the females during the shooting season, whilst the males as a 
rule escape. By the end of the shooting season at Murthly, I have often seen as 
many as 100 hens left for stock, and did not know of a single old male on the ground, 
and yet the keepers always reported to me the arrival of a dozen males in the spring. 
These generally departed again for Rohallion immediately after the breeding season. 
This change of residence has been noted by various Scandinavian and Russian writers, 
and I have observed that like movements of the roe-deer it nearly always takes place 
from an old growth of forest to a young one. The females, especially the young ones, 
are always the pioneers of these movements, 1 and from close inquiries I am led to 
believe that many of these young hens fly to considerable distances after mating with 
the males, and then make their nests and bring up their families in new localities. 
This is proved by the finding of nests and broods far from the usual Capercaillie 
haunts, and where no males have ever been seen. In cases where these females have 
wandered far afield and have not been impregnated, we often hear of blackgame 
and Capercaillie hybrids, due to the mating of the last-named female with males 
of the other species. Mr. Harvie-Brown states (p. 198) that he has noticed that 
the birds thrive best in sloping woods that have a southerly exposure, but I have not 
observed this. Most of the Earnside woods frequented by Capercaillie have such an 
aspect, but this is not the case in the Tay valley and Forfarshire, where the birds 
are equally numerous. On the whole, I am inclined to think that the main winter 
resorts are the high fir woods of the upper slopes, whilst the nesting grounds are 
more often the younger forests of the river valleys ; but there is no hard-and-fast 
line, except that females always outnumber the males by ten to one in the younger 
coverts of deciduous trees. 
In the autumn it is not unusual to surprise both males and females at consider- 
able distances from woods, and I have seen many killed when rising out of deep 
heather at some distance from the timber. Owing to the preservation still wisely 
enforced by Lord Breadalbane upon his shooting tenants along Loch Tayside, Caper- 
caillie are becoming numerous in the birch woods on both sides of the loch, and are 
often found in such semi-open ground as is frequented by black grouse. Their numbers 
in this locality received a welcome addition during the great gale of 1895, when half the 
fir forests in this part of Scotland were blown down. A keeper at Achmore, Killin, 
where there was an isolated wood full of Capercaillie, told me that at the end of the 
gale there was only one old Scotch fir left standing, and upon it he counted over forty 
1 Lloyd, an excellent authority on Capercaillie in Norway and Sweden, considers the males to be more abundant than 
the females, and the author of Tidskri/t for Jagare states that this is the case both in this species and blackgame. He 
also remarks that it is the males which give rise to the big migrations in Scandinavia. It is quite possible that he is correct, 
for in three visits to Norway I have seen quite as many males as females of both species, whilst in Scotland the reverse is 
undoubtedly the case. 
