The ptarmigan breeds in May. Its nest is well concealed, and is merely a slight hollow in the ground, lined with a little dry grass. Eight to ten eggs are laid, of a yellowish white blotched with dark brown. In autumn or early in winter the birds pack, and sometimes as many as fifty are seen in one flock. Macgillivray has the following interesting account of the bird in its mountain haunts: ‘These beautiful birds, while feeding, run and walk among the weather-beaten and lichen-crested fragments of rock, from which it is very difficult to distinguish them when they remain motionless, as they invariably do should a person be in sight. Indeed, unless you are directed to a particular spot by their strange low, croaking cry, you may pass through a flock of ptarmigans without observing a single individual, although some of them may not be ten yards distant. When squatted, however, they utter no sound, their object being to conceal themselves; and if you discover the one from which the cry has proceeded, you generally find him on the top of a stone, ready to spring off the moment you show an indication of hostility. If you throw a stone at him, he rises, utters his call, and is immediately joined by all the individuals around, which, to your surprise, if it be your first _rencontre_, you see spring up one by one from the bare ground.’ Red Grouse. Lagopus scoticus. Plumage reddish brown on the head and neck, and chestnut brown, barred and speckled with black, on the upper parts; the feathers of the breast almost black, with white tips. In summer the general colour is lighter; in winter the under parts are frequently mottled with white. Length, sixteen inches. _Female_: more reddish yellow in colour. * * * * * One sunny morning a few months ago, as I stood on a mountain slope among bracken, ling, and furze, and scattered masses of grey rock, watching a small party of grouse near me, it struck me that I had never looked on a more beautiful creature than this bird:--so finely shaped and richly coloured, and proud and free in carriage, and in such perfect harmony with the rough vegetation and that wild and solitary nature amid which it exists. It is not strange that this species should have a fascination above all others for the sportsman that he is willing to go farther and spend more in its pursuit; for it is not the bird only that draws him: the fascination is of that unadulterated nature of which the bird is a part, and the sense of liberty and savage life that returns to man in the midst of mountain and moorland scenery.