MANAGEMENT OF GROUSE MOORS 
snow when the hens are sitting, unless it should fall when they are off 
their nests, and the latter get covered up, but the grouse are good judges 
of weather, and are not often deceived in this respect. They are very 
devoted, however, and if a really deep fall should occur, they may sit so 
close, and for so long a time, as to get weak from hunger, and may not be 
able to obtain sufficient food, having to travel a long way for it. Many a hen 
dies on her nest from sheer weakness after a prolonged storm. 
Effects of snow . — Even when a nest is snowed over whilst the hen is still 
laying, it by no means follows that the eggs are rendered unfertile, for it is 
surprising what vitality they possess, and what an amount of cold they can 
withstand, far more than those of either partridges or pheasants. It may 
be here pointed out that grouse are excessively shy birds when laying, 
and if then surprised and put off the nest, they will at once desert it. 
Even if the hen notices a person stop and look in her direction, it is generally 
sufficient to cause her to forsake her nest. After she has been sitting a few 
days it is different, and hardly anything will alarm her sufficiently to cause 
her to desert. It is therefore necessary to keep the moor absolutely undis- 
turbed during the period of laying. A hen grouse takes about a fortnight 
to lay a full clutch. 
The Committee of Inquiry on grouse disease assert that the health of the 
birds is of far greater importance than the weather, and bad weather does 
little harm if the stock is healthy. Per contra, if the stock is unhealthy, bad 
weather at breeding time will result in a poor crop of young birds, and if the 
heather growth is indifferent the birds should be closely shot down in the 
autumn, leaving only a moderate stock, which may then find sufficient food 
to keep themselves in a thriving condition in the following spring. Grouse 
are extremely hardy birds, and so long as the food is good, what kind of 
weather it may be during the winter seems to be immaterial. But it is a 
bad sign, as the autumn advances, to find the feathers on the legs of the 
grouse not properly developed, and when this state of things is observed, 
the more grouse that are shot the better. 
Moorland plants . — ^There are many other plants besides heather which 
make up the bill of fare, and on some moors a failure of the heather is not 
of such serious consequence as it is on others. Where the blaeberry, whortle- 
berry or bilberry {Vaccinium myrtillus), is prevalent, grouse eat largely, in 
the late winter, of the shoots containing the buds, and in the summer they 
eat the leaves, and berries when they are ripe. In the springtime they 
also eat quantities of the stalks and tops of cotton-grass (Eriophoruni), 
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