“I have lived more than one whole year,” said Father Grouse, “but I was born in a very bad season. The heather was bitten by the frost, the rain was unceasing, we could not get enough food, and it was terribly cold on the wet ground. Hundreds died—but lie down, somebody is coming.”
The family crouched low in the heather and saw the landlord’s factor walking up the hill-side with a stout gentleman who wore an unbecoming coat and a waistcoat with a heavy watch chain across it. The stout gentleman passed a handkerchief across his forehead. “It is a fine view,” he gasped, “and what are the limits of the bag?”
“Eight hundred brace of grouse may be shot and forty stags but the laird is not a hard man and might make it a thousand brace and fifty stags,” said the factor, who had forgotten how to blush.
“Now,” whispered Father Grouse, and uttering a challenge, he rose within three yards of the stout gentleman, closely followed by wife and family.
“You see,” said the factor, “the moor is packed with birds, you can almost walk over them.”
“Why did you show yourself like that, my dear?” said Mother Grouse, when they had settled after a long easy flight.
“Ah,” replied her husband, “you leave me to attend to my own business. I like to see men like that on the moor, they do no harm. It is the young, slender men who are never tired and are always shooting that I object to. You can’t get away from them, Kok-kok.”
“Did you hear the factor,” continued Father Grouse, after as near an approach to a chuckle as a red grouse can achieve. “He said the bag was limited to eight hundred brace, though the laird might make the limit up to a thousand. Now there are not two hundred and fifty brace on the moor. As for the stags, fancy a man like that trying to stalk them; well, let us go and eat some heather-tops—such talk makes me feel weak.”
They were glorious days that led to the middle of August. The young grouse was becoming quite big; he could take long flights without fatigue, could accomplish a small call, was an adept at finding good food and soft sleeping places, and he never allowed his attentions to stray from his feathered enemies.
He had some narrow escapes; on one occasion the peregrine falcon struck down one of his sisters as she was flying by his side; on another the great Golden Eagle, coming from his eyrie on the mountain top, was circling over him, but suddenly saw a young deer calf on a rock not far away. The rock looked over the bare hill-side, and the eagle, lighting on the poor calf’s back, buffeted its face so heavily with his wings that it fell off the rock and, tumbling down, was killed on the hill-side. The Golden Eagle made his meal, the fox and the carrion crow took what was left. It was a sad sight, and the Golden Eagle was more unpopular than ever on the moor and in the forest.