THE RED GROUSE. 
49 
and other notes might frequently be heard at all hours of the day 
throughout the year : they were uttered without regard to the 
number of persons near the aviary at the time. Indeed the birds 
became so familiar or bold as to utter their go back/^ and go 
away/^ when persons approached the aviary, and they replied in 
these words to those who imitated their caUs. They were accused 
of saying to intruders be off/"’ as distinctly as “ go back and 
go away/^ and certainly their notes fairly bore this interpre- 
tation. The birds were generally believed to use the words in the 
same sense that their hearers would do ! 
The red grouse appears to breed rarely in confinement. Among 
the few instances on record, Daniel, in his “ Eural Sports,^^ men- 
tions three, one of which was in Ireland, at Eathfarnham House, 
county of Dublin, in 1802. Mr. Howard, of Eoundtown, near 
Dublin, informed me, when visiting his interesting collection of 
living birds in May 1849, that a pair of red grouse, which he 
had a few years ago, bred ; five young being produced and 
reared. 
I have twice within about twenty years known single grouse to 
be killed on a low and narrow bare strip of land, called the Kin- 
negar, which stretches in a direction parallel to the nearest line of 
coast — a miniature promontory — into the bay of Belfast, about- 
four miles from the town. On both occasions there was a little 
frost and a powdering of snow on the mountains at the opposite 
side of the bay, the nearest haunt of the species ; about as much 
as drives the golden plover thence to the vicinity of the sea. The 
first of these grouse, indeed, was credibly stated to have been 
seen coming from the direction of the mountains in company 
with a fiock of golden plover. The second was killed on the 9th 
March, 1849. 
The grouse breeds very early. On the 1 7th of March a sport- 
ing friend once found a nest, containing eleven eggs, on the Bel- 
fast mountains. When hare-hunting here so late as the middle of 
April, I have more than once, to my great regret, seen the pack 
of hounds come upon the nest, and set to work so quickly, that 
every egg was devoured before the dogs could possibly be whipped 
VOL. II. E 
