Northern Grouse
Not often is the contrast between Southern and Northern Britain so sharply defined as this year ; and now that the armistice is over a fresh point in the contrast comes into view. The grouse, the one bird wholly characteristic of the North, has suffered greatly from the war. Partly through disease (due perhaps to absence of guns) and excess of vermin (certainly due to lack of keepers) the birds are too few to warrant even one day's sport. Some reports appear to indicate that bird migration from the North was rather early ; but it is certainly more than normally late in the South, at any rate in regard to the " devlin " or swift, which more often disappears in July than in August. The bird has been—the thrush—more numerous than recent years. One ardent and admirable observer (from the neighbourhood of Glasgow) tells me that he had not seen a swift for many years in his neighbourhood till this summer.
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