208 F. R. S. Balfour■—Caper collie in Upper Tweeddale


caught, they were not sent to me owing, I believe, to difficulty in

getting permission for the export of game birds from Norway.


My next attempt was to get them from Finland. Of two cock

and four hen cc Auerwild 35 shipped to me from Helsingfors to Hull in

November, 1930, all arrived safely except one of the cocks, which died

on the voyage. Of the four hens, one died a few days after they had

been turned into our woods in the last week of the month. The

Capercaillie were seen from time to time in my woods and those of

my neighbours, but I did not hear of any nesting in the season

of 1931.


In October of that year two more cocks and one hen reached me

safely from Finland.


In June, 1932, at an altitude of about 1,300 feet in a larch wood

of about ninety years old, I saw a nest of seven eggs and flushed

both the old birds. By laying rags soaked in renardine here and

there in a circle a hundred yards from the nest we assured its safety

from foxes. All the eggs hatched. I heard of another nest in the wood

of Glentress, some twelve miles down the valley, and we believe that

another brood was reared at Dawyck in the same larch wood as that

in which the first nest was found, but over a mile distant.


This year a nest was found on the 2nd June, with five eggs, at

about the same altitude as the nest of last year. We protected it in

the same manner and I have since learned that all the eggs hatched.


It is well known that the native Capercaillie became extinct about

the year 1770, the last mention of it being that of Pennant, who said

it could still be met with in Glenmoriston in Inverness-shire in 1769.

It was reintroduced at Taymouth in Perthshire in 1837 and 1838.

Since then it has steadily progressed through the glens of the Highlands

wherever the planting of coniferous woods has provided it with food.


The interest of my experiment is that, as far as I know, the species

does not occur elsewhere south of Clyde and Forth, though an attempt

to establish it was made in 1841 at Glenapp in Ayrshire and occasionally

since then, though I believe without success.



