PROSPECTS OF GAME.
FROM this time onward in the 'year's course we shall not bear or see much more of our game birds, except the pheasants, until the cutting of the corn reveals to us the families of the partridge and until the grouse are flushed by the dogs or by the drivers. Until those times the one bird will be within the cover of the growing corn and the other of the thick heather, and we shall have no further opportunities of reckoning their numbers: Such reckoning as can be done may be done at the present date, and thereafter, for a while, the books will be virtually closed. With the pheasant the case is very different. He is much more of a semi-domesticated bird, and the keeper has him under observation and under care throughout the year.
With regard to the prospects of the grouse, the most hope- ful feature of the present time is the fact that the past winter was such an unusually favourable one for heather-burning. The time is gone when it might have been necessary to lay any stress on the importance of this operation. On all sides it is now conceded that the old long heather provides the worst possible lying for the birds, and at the same time fails to provide them adequately with the food that they like best, in the shape of the young shoots. At the time of the hatching of the birds it is especially important that they should have a supply of this young heather to browse on, for they are not able at their tender age to pull off the tougher and older shoots. No doubt they also feed largely on insects of various kinds, but the young heather is probably the piece de resistance of all their meals. The best manner of burning, in frequent small patches, is also well understood by the modern keeper who is up to his work, and the long strips which used to be the old mode are not now seen on any properly burnt moor. The exception to the general burning is on the exposed hillocks. Here, if the heather be left to grow long, it Will provide a shelter for the grouse in time of snow, provided the snow has not fallen in a windless air, because the wind will blow the snow away from the exposed tops. • The story of the year, regarded from the point of view of its weather conditions, which are so important for all kinds of game, and even for domestic animals, is virtually the same all over the kingdom,—a very mild winter followed by a very severe spring, its severity consisting rather in the continuance of moderate cold than in any snaps of extreme rigour. The effect was that all animals were inclined to be forward in their domestic work until the cold spring weather checked their activities. Those. which had commenced nesting before the cold check came were rather early, but the majority were delayed somewhat beyond their usual date. It seems as if this were the most reasonable way in Which to account for the abnormal facts of the present year such as that in some parts of Scotland (and not the most sheltered parts, for the Forfarshire country of the East Coast, from which this report was received, is not a mild district) partridges were as much as a fortnight before their usual time of hatching out. In the great shooting counties of the East of England, Norfolk and Suffolk, partridges were hatched just about their usual time,—that is to say, on June 18th and 19th principally ; and the hatch-out at this moment was a particularly well-timed one. Up to the actual day of the hatching the weather had been very cold indeed for the time of year, and had it continued at such a temperature it would have been very trying for the young chicks, especially, as they would have been almost deprived of the insect food which is their chief sustenance in the early days. But just at the right moment for them the weather turned beautifully mild, so that it must have been a happy world into which they chipped their way out of the shell, a world of warmth and sunshine and abundance of nourishing insect food. They had a trying experience when they were about nine or ten days old, and the thunderstorm of the night of June 28th came upon them; but it was all the better for them that it came at nights when they would have been gathered under their mothers' protection. The partridge mother is a model parent, and there cannot be a doubt that in weather so cold as in some of the nights of the past May the habit of the parent of covering up the nest, with leaves and so on, when she quits it previously to sitting must have been of great service to the stock, and must have saved many an egg from fatal frostbite. Of course, once the bird has begun to sit, there is no longer danger that the eggs will be frosted, always provided the rain is not heavy enough to form a lakelet which will make the old bird leave the nest. But a good keeper will not be likely to allow eggs to remain in a depression where this is at all apt to occur. The storm of June 28th was a good deal more severe in some parts than in others, and perhaps the Eastern Counties, especially along the Eastern Coast, escaped as lightly as any of the more Southern parts of England; but in many cases it is to be feared that the young partridges must have suffered heavily. On the whole, however, so good a stock was left at the end of last season, and the nesting season has gone off with such an absence of any large and inevitable disaster, that there is reason to hope that the birds have brought up satisfactory families, in regard both to health and numbers; and if they escape the epidemic which often attacks them during the dry days of August, the cutting of the corn should reveal them to us again in fairly populous coveys.
The grouse, living where the temperature is lower and nesting earlier, do not promise nearly as well as the partridges. The census of the young grouse population is not as easy to take as that of the partridges, every nest of which should be known by a competent keeper unless he be asked to look after an im- possibly large beat. The case with the grouse is quite different. It would be the worst possible policy to tramp over the moors in quest of the nests. The recognised way of arriving at a conjectural estimate of the young grouse stock hi to mark certain nests, at different points of the moor, which are taken as likely to be typical of the other nests in their own neighbourhood. From the numbers of eggs laid and birds batched off in these marked nests an inference is drawn with respect to the general stock. It would appear that this year the grouse of the South of Scotland and of the North of England, beginning their nesting a little earlier than the more Northern grouse and experiencing the same snowfall, must have suffered very heavy loss ; and again, from some of the Northern moors, and from most of the Yorkshire moors, the accounts are gloomy in the extreme; but, on the other hand, from Forfarshire, from moors on the eastern side of Yorkshire, and, across England, from moors in Wales, the reports are optimistic. Clutches of eggs are spoken of as large, and the birds as bringing off something like an average of eight or nine young ones from a nest. It is very difficult to reconcile the conflicting tendencies of these various accounts. Some of the conflict of evidence may be due to real local differences. Where the loss, which the stock has certainly suffered in some parts, is due to snow, a great deal of difference may be made by the direction and the force of the wind with which the fall takes place. As has been indicated, the snowfall in a still air is often the worst of all, because it leaves no patches uncovered; but the aspect of the hillside, with reference to the direction of the wind bringing the snow, must also affect the situation of the birds very con- siderably. Add to this the uncertain and rather conjectural way in which the estimates of the grouse stock are reckoned, and it will be realised that the discrepancy may be in some degree accounted for by what logicians would call the fallacy of generalising from too few particulars. We can only hope that if mistakes have been made in the reckoning, they have been made by those whose calculations have been on the pessimistic, not on the optimistic, line. And experience shows us that in estimates of the grouse the error is more
often in the former direction than in the latter. It has frequently happened that when the drivers have come on the moor they have put up many more birds than had been included in the forecasts of the keepers ; and it has also often occurred that more birds have been put up on the second than on the first time of driving. The explanation of this seeming paradox is that many of the birds were of the second brood, and so backward that they would not fly when the beaters first came to them, but by the time of the second drive they had gained more power of wing, and rose more freely. It is therefore wise, as well as pleasant, to hope for the best as regards the grouse, although some of the prophets are exhort- ing us to expect the worst.
The most satisfactory of all the accounts is that which we receive of the pheasants; and it is the account which can be most accurately made, and most carefully checked. Wild pheasants have done quite unusually well, and the tame birds have certainly hatched out better than the hatching of domestic poultry gave us any reason for hoping. We hear reports, indeed, from heavily overstocked ground, of the epidemic which was so widely fatal last year, and we do not think that we shall have an immunity from it until people cease to rear pheasants in their present vast numbers ; but the methods of combating it begin to be better understood and more generally practised, and of our three principal game birds the pheasant promises the best in the present season.
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