Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/336

308 leaves her charge even for a short airing, yet her retreat is often discovered, and her nest plundered of the eggs. But eggs and young are equally acceptable to the voracious robber: the day on which the young bird first breaks the shell is doubly hazardous: when it first inhales the vital air it gives a small but sharp chirp; the mother's feelings are all aroused, and she responds in a hoarse tone: the villain crow is lurking in the neighbourhood; he knows there is a nest at hand, and that the brood is about to hatch; he has learned this from certain movements of the parent grouse, which he has often watched, but, notwithstanding all his vigilance, the nest has hitherto escaped him: these sounds lead him to the very spot, and the fond mother must yield the objects of all her motherly feelings, or must herself become the victim of the ruthless destroyer. In an agony of fear she leaves the spot where all her cares have just terminated; she throws herself carelessly among the bushes, and flounces away in the heather, uttering all the while cries of terror and distress, but the crow heeds her not: he heard the young ones cry; his ear directs him to the nest, and there he gobbles the little ones one after another, though some are not yet ready to escape from the shell.

The places selected by the grouse for her nest are generally on the borders between heath and lea ground: this choice proceeds entirely from instinct: though the grouse feeds on heath, lives among heath, and is protected by heath, yet, by the common instinct of nature, she is aware of the danger of a heathery space to hatch in; she knows that she could not rear her little ones on a space of rank heath; the weaklings' legs would fasten among its small branches, or, in their endeavours to hide, they would thrust themselves below its stronger stems, and in either case, before they could escape, life would be extinct: a place is therefore chosen where the young have free and ample space the moment they leave the shell. Six or seven eggs is the usual number for a season; they are of a whitish brown, daubed over with darker spots: the hen sits very close, allowing the shepherd almost to trample on her before she springs. No creature uses more cunning to allure man or dog from the nest than the grouse.

The red grouse usually fly in pairs, yet a single bird is often seen: when snow is on the ground they congregate in flocks: in great snowdrifts they allow themselves to be overblown, but to no great depth, and then the poacher may easily beguile them by mimicking their cry. W. H.