The Red Grouse 
57 
and well into May, these mischievous old cocks roam to and fro creating work for the 
divorce courts. Besides careful heather-burning, nothing has so improved Grouse as 
the practice of driving, for it diminishes the number of these co-respondents and gives 
the younger males a chance in the spring-time. Kiting in October is also an excellent 
method of killing old cocks, or walking quietly by oneself round the tops and catching 
these old fellows when alone or in pairs. In April I have been watching Grouse on 
a hillside, and seen the same hen appropriated by four different cocks in as many 
minutes, and then abandoned altogether. Females thus treated will not nest. They 
become unsettled and unfit for duties as a mother. I would strongly advocate shooting 
old blackcocks at the playing-ground in April — that is to say, by experienced persons ; 
but to shoot old cock Grouse at this season would not do for many reasons. The remedy 
is to keep the moor in good condition at the proper time. Old cocks that will not pair, 
but do nothing but worry others, are the worst kind of vermin, and indirectly do great 
damage, as any observant keeper can testify. 
Grouse have been known to nest as early as February, which proves that in certain 
seasons they will pair at a very early date ; but I have never seen the nest before the 
end of April, and even that is early. Full clutches are generally laid the second week 
of May. At this date several blizzards of snow often occur in the high ground, as 
they did in 1906 in the third week in May, and the birds sit so close that many 
perish on their nests. During this month a keeper told me he had found over twenty 
hens dead on their eggs, and yet this and adjoining moors did remarkably well in 
August, since most of the birds which were not actually brooding made fresh nests. 
Mr. Seton Gordon thus writes 1 on the same topic : — 
"Their nesting season is comparatively early, considering the storms they are subject to on 
the mountains, and often a later snowstorm than usual plays havoc with their nests. Especially 
was this the case during the spring of 1906, when about the third week of May a very severe 
blizzard visited nearly the whole of Scotland. In places drifts of great depth were rapidly formed, 
and in one district, after the storm, a keeper found no less than nine hen grouse dead on their 
nests during a single morning's walk on the moors. In another case a keeper told me that a 
certain grouse had just finished laying, but had not commenced to brood, when the storm came 
on and covered nest and eggs with many inches of snow. The hen bird, however, remained 
near by for over a week, until the eggs once more appeared from beneath the snow, when she 
took up the duties of incubation and hatched out her brood as if nothing had happened. 
However, many of the birds were not so fortunate, and in several instances I saw a pair of old 
birds with only one or two young ones, and in some cases none at all. Yet the most extraordinary 
thing about it was that the shooting season was the most successful for years, and on a moor 
which suffered more than any bags of 140 brace and more were got for days on end. The only 
explanation seems to be that in the majority of cases the birds had only just commenced to 
brood, and so were able to lay a second clutch within a short time, for as late as the end of August 
I came upon young birds still weak on the wing. A shepherd informed me that at the beginning 
of that month he had flushed a hen from her nest so weak that she was unable to fly, having 
probably sat on her eggs for two months at least, as most likely these had been rendered infertile 
by the May snowstorm." 
The nest is a slight hollow in the ground, lined with moss and grass, and well 
sheltered by heather and tufts of grass. The eggs, cream and buff-spotted and blotched 
1 Country Life, May 17, 1907. 
H 
