When he woke to being, and left the warm shelter of his mother’s feathers to take a look at the world around him, the sun was smiling upon the purple heather, and a light wind was stirring the leaves of birch and mountain-ash in the plantation below. He was no more than a tiny ball of yellow fluff with some dark-brown marks on back and sides, and a chestnut patch on his head, and there were eight brothers and sisters exactly like each other, waiting for him by the side of the heather tuft under which his mother had been hatching her eggs.
His father sat on another tuft a few yards away, spreading his plumage in the sunlight, and the little grouse thought he was fortunate in having such a handsome parent. The head, neck, breast and sides of Father Grouse were of a very bright chestnut colour, with black lines across, his lower feathers were darker, but tipped with white, to show his pure Highland breeding.
“Kok-kok,” said Father Grouse. “What a fine family I have to be sure. The stupid gamekeeper put his foot in our first nest and we had to make another one. So you are all very late. June is already here, the other birds on the moor can fly by now. Kok-kok.”
Then he and his wife broke off the tiny fresh tops of the heather, and the little bird, having been fed with his brothers and sisters, ran about in the sun till it went down, and then crept back to the nest where the shells of broken eggs had been lying, pale cream shells covered with heavy blotches of red. The little grouse, warm under his mother’s feathers and above the moss that lined the nest, slept quite happily, dreaming of the days when he would be able to fly over the moor. He woke with a start hearing his father crying:—
“Who goes there? Who goes there? my sword, my sword.”
“Don’t be frightened,” said Mother Grouse reassuringly, as the little ones nestle closer to her, “he says that every morning.”
The newcomer soon became accustomed to be called at daybreak by this startling cry, and he learned as soon to hide from the buzzard, the peregrine falcon and the carrion crows that, between them, eventually managed to secure all his brothers, because they would not listen to their father’s warning. Mrs. Grouse had decided at last that the last big egg, which was as broad at one end as at the other, held no son or daughter, and as soon as she had made up her mind about that she put on her summer dress; it was buff-coloured and marked with irregular bars of black. When the family had admired it they flew together across the heather. Father Grouse had no summer dress; he did not change his costume before autumn.
The family kept to the moor, where they met many very pleasant relatives with children quite grown up, so much like their mothers that it was hard to tell the difference, and while they were together Father Grouse gave his only son a lot of useful information.
“We keep to the heather,” he said. “It is our own. On the hills beyond,” and he pointed to the mountain behind the moor, “you find our cousins, the ptarmigan. In the plantation below the hills where there are birch, hazel, ash and juniper trees and where the roebuck hides in the ferns, you have another cousin, the blackcock. He feeds with us sometimes. We have not much to do with either of them, though we are not unfriendly. Kok-kok.”
It was a very fine summer, the heather was fresh and sweet to eat, and very warm to lie on. The little grouse soon lost the yellow down that had covered him, and his plumage became very much like his mother’s. The family would fly about in a group, father and mother leading, and they often went off the heather to eat the grass and early berries.