RED GROUSE. 199 
March, 1794, near Pendle Hill, in Yorkshire, by the game- 
keeper of Mr. Lister, afterwards Lord Ribblesdale; and a nest 
with fifteen eggs was found on the 25th. of March, 1835, on 
Shap Fell, Westmoreland. The female usually begins to lay 
in March or April; she sits very close, and Mr. Salmon says 
that one allowed him to take her off her eggs. 
The nest is made of twigs of heather. and grass, with 
occasionally a few of the bird’s own feathers, and is placed 
among heath in some slight hollow. 
The eggs are usually six or seven, but sometimes from 
eight to twelve, or even more, in number, of different shades 
of ground colour—reddish white, brownish yellow, yellowish 
grey, or yellowish white, thickly clouded, blotted, and dotted 
with blackish and brown: they are nearly of a regular oval 
form. 
While the young are hatching, the hen utters an occasional 
chuckle. The Heath Poults leave the nest shortly after they 
are hatched, and are soon able to fly; they keep together till 
the end of autumn, unless disturbed by shooters: they are 
attended by both the parents. At the beginning of the 
season they lie close, but gradually become wild as they are 
disturbed. 
Male; weight, about nineteen or twenty ounces, and from 
that to twenty-three, or even to twenty-four and three 
quarters, or upwards; the Grouse of Yorkshire are said to 
be the smallest, but Daniel, in his ‘Rural Sports,’ mentions 
one killed near Richmond, in Yorkshire, which weighed 
twenty-five ounces, and Pennant another which weighed 
twenty-nine; one killed in Wales weighed thirty ounces, and 
another twenty-six ounces; another near Todmorden, in Lan- 
cashire, one pound fifteen ounces. Length, from one foot 
three inches and a quarter, to a little over one foot four and 
a half; bill, brownish black, half hidden in feathers—there are 
a few small white feathers at the base, ending in a thread 
of white on the side of the head; iris, chesnut brown; the 
membrane over the eyebrows red, the feathers of the eyelids 
white. Head, deep chesnut brown; the crown irregularly 
barred im summer with brownish black, as is the neck on 
the back and nape; chin, throat, and breast, reddish chesnut 
brown, the latter blackish brown on its middle part, the 
chesnut bars being narrower than the black ones, and some — 
of the feathers are white at thew tips; the ground colour 
paler, and more barred in summer. Back, reddish brown, 
