The black cock is polygamous; and at the end of winter many birds meet together at an early hour of the morning, when the males utter their powerful call-notes, and strut to and fro, with tail expanded and trailing wings, in the presence of the hens. These ‘matrimonial markets’ are scenes of desperate combats between rival cocks. In the end each male retires with the females he has secured for his harem. The hen makes a slight nest under the shelter of a bush, and lays six to ten eggs, yellowish white, with orange-brown spots. The young feed principally on larvæ of ants and other insects. Grain, seeds, berries and buds, and shoots of many kinds, are eaten by the old birds. Capercaillie. Tetrao urogallus. [Illustration: FIG. 94.--CAPERCAILLIE. ¹⁄₁₂ natural size.] Feathers of the throat elongated, black; head and neck dusky; eyes with a bare red skin above and a white spot below; wings brown speckled with black; breast lustrous green; belly black with white spots; rump and flanks marked with undulating lines of black and ash colour; tail black with white spots; beak horn-white. Length, two feet ten inches. _Female_: a third smaller, barred and spotted with tawny red, black, and white; throat tawny red; breast deep red; tail dark red with black bars, white at the tip. * * * * * North Britain, with its islands, although poor in species comparatively, has one glory which her larger, richer neighbour is without: her wilder districts still afford breeding-places to several of the larger species which have long ceased to exist in England. Of these are the osprey, sea-eagle, golden eagle, ptarmigan, and capercaillie, the last the finest game-bird of Europe, with the sole exception of the great bustard. The story of the capercaillie in Great Britain is singularly interesting. It became extinct about the middle of the last century, and was recovered some eighty or ninety years later, when it was reintroduced from Sweden in 1837–8, and has since spread over a large portion of Scotland, and continues to extend its range. The difference in size between the cock and hen capercaillie is greater than in any other game-bird. In Scotland, the weight of the male is from ten to eleven pounds, that of the female about four pounds and a half. In northern Europe the cock weighs as much as seventeen pounds. It is curious to find that in a large number of gallinaceous birds, the pheasants and grouse more especially, the females have a near resemblance in size, form, and colouring. The divergence is mostly in the males, and is greatest in the polygamous species. Thus, it would be difficult to find two birds in the same order more utterly unlike in appearance than the cock pheasant and capercaillie; yet the females of the two species preserve a strong family likeness.