Part 48

Ptarmigan are generally walked up by a line of guns when a party can all be got to ascend to the high tops inhabited by these birds, Alpine hares, and little life besides, except for the eagles, which greatly appreciate both bird and mammal. The eagle has been known to strike down a ptarmigan in the air, although it probably catches them generally on the ground. The reason why dogs are not much used for ptarmigan is that the almost constant foot scent of hares leads to false pointing or else to hunting their lines; both tricks are equally objectionable, and show that the dogs have only been partially broken, possibly in the absence of hares. In a hare country it is quite easy to have high-couraged dogs that will point hares in their seats but will not notice the foot scents. These are so seldom seen, though, that it is best, in their absence, to walk up or to drive ptarmigan. They are in a sense the wildest of British game, but it is a wildness that induces hiding for safety rather than flight. Their protective coloration enables them to deceive their greatest enemies, the eagles and the falcons, and they naturally rely on the device of absolute stillness to escape detection by other creatures. Generally they fly away at sight of an eagle, but lie stone close when a falcon comes in view. The eagle can sometimes kill them on the wing, but this is more frequently the falcon’s method, and the birds know it. In winter they change to white, and the snow affords them protection, not only because of its similar whiteness, but also because they bury themselves in it for safety as well as for food. In summer they are grey and white, showing grey from above and looking white on taking flight. It is a mistake to say that they feed upon heather; the majority of ptarmigan live winter and summer above the highest altitude of the heather. The number of birds is nowhere very great, nor could they be expected to increase very much; for the vegetation on which they mostly live is scanty on their chosen rocks, and is indeed the moss which grows on these apparently almost bare surfaces. Were numbers large, ptarmigan would be more valued as game birds, because of their greater activity in flight than the red grouse. Often they fly like rock pigeons leaving their cliff caves, and, unlike the red grouse, they frequently make very steep angle flights at a very great velocity down hill, and then they can twist and swerve and curve in a wonderful manner. To be seen at their best they must be visited in October, but it is dangerous work when a chance exists of a snowstorm. Ptarmigan are found all round the Arctic circle, although some people think the American variety a different species. The birds sold in the game-dealers’ shops as ptarmigan are nearly always willow grouse—the rype of Norway. There the ptarmigan is the Fjeldrype, and in Sweden it is the Fjallripa. Its scientific title is Lagopus mutus. The ptarmigan is monogamous, and has from 8 to 15 eggs. Neither nests nor birds are easy to find in the breeding season, and on the most open spaces, where there is no covert whatever, the bird frequently escapes observation; and, besides, the croak of the bird is very misleading, and will rarely assist in the discovery of the locality of origin of the voice. Probably the rocks assist this ventriloquism. Ptarmigan are not found in England or Ireland, and no farther south than the Grampians on the mainland, and Islay in the isles of Scotland. The largest bag ever made, as far as is known to the author, was the 122 obtained by the late Hon. G. R. C. Hill at Auchnashellach on 25th August, 1866. But the 142 obtained in the year on the whole of the Duke of Sutherland’s property in 1880, when over 50,000 grouse were shot, much nearer shows how little sport may be expected even on good ground. Ptarmigan, in common with grouse and partridges, feign lameness to draw an enemy away from their young.

THE COOT

This is an excellent bird where it is found in great numbers, but is only fitted to give much sport by driving. It rises slowly, but is fast when on the wing, flies high, and takes a great deal of killing. Colonel Hawker quite rightly advised those who would have wild fowl to preserve their coots and not to keep tame swans. Wild fowl fancy themselves secure in the presence of coots, which are most wakeful when the duck by day are much disposed to sleep. Gallinula chloropus, the moorhen, gives no sport, but is good training for retrievers. Linnæus gave the title Fulica atra to the coot. It lays from 7 to 10 eggs.

THE WIDGEON, OR THE WHEW BIRD

This bird breeds seldom in Scotland and Ireland, but large quantities come from abroad in the hard weather; they are the principal attraction of the punt gunner, and afford the chief profit of the decoy man. The way to find widgeon is to discover their chief food, the Zostera marina of the mud flats, and then wait for hard weather and the night, when they feed. Mareca penelopes is its scientific name.

WILD GEESE

The grey-lag is the handsomest of these, and the only one that breeds in Britain, and there only in the extreme north of Scotland. It goes South early, and affords little or no winter shooting in this country. In the early autumn some flight shooting and stalking are to be had in its breeding homes.

THE PINK-FOOTED GOOSE

This is the principal of the grey geese to afford sport; it is this species that gives such a great deal of shooting on the north Norfolk coast, but it is not found in Ireland, which is famed in winter for its black geese—the locally miscalled bernicle, i.e. the brent goose, which, if not now found in thousands of acres, as described in Wild Sports of the West, are still migrants in their hundreds of thousands.

The brent goose is entirely a marine feeder, and is consequently, along with the widgeon, the great game of the punt gunner. There are many other varieties of geese, both migrants and introductions, like the Canada goose, but they count for very little in sport in this country, whereas in Egypt, on the Nile, wonderful sport has been had with Egyptian geese, and there is a regular harvest for Canada geese in America, where as many as 200 flighting birds have been shot in a day by one gunner. The beginner in punt gunning cannot do better than buy a second-hand gun and punt, and learn from them what he really wants, which will never be quite the same for any two men. Much depends upon the man himself, whether he intends to have assistance, and whether he has also a yacht to carry him and his punt and guns abroad. As many people have started this sport who have not gone on with it, probably advertising for the outfit would be a certain way of obtaining it at small cost, even if the gun-shops were drawn blank, which is not likely at any time. To be a punt gunner, one has to place oneself at the call of the wind, at the mercy of the wave, and to become the plaything of the tide. But then revenge is sweeping, if it is not also sweet.

DISEASES OF GAME BIRDS

A few weeks before the Field induced Dr. Klein to take up the question of grouse disease and to go to Scotland to investigate, the author had prevailed upon M. Pasteur to offer to examine the disease, and it was after this was announced in the Times and Morning Post that Dr. Klein began his work. The author regretted that he did undertake it, because it just prevented the necessary grouse being sent to M. Pasteur, and that great man had a way not only of discovering bacilli but also of some way of killing them. Dr. Klein may or may not have discovered the bacillus of the grouse disease, but if so he never gave the disease to a healthy grouse, nor did he even attempt to discover a cure for or prevention from the disease, and however interesting to science his discovery may have been, it was of no use in practice. If he did really discover the cause of the disease, and if grouse are only subject to take the disease in the same manner as the creatures to which he administered his disease, then there appears no escape from the conclusion that the disease is injected under the skin of healthy grouse.

Every one knows that grouse disease generally shows signs of its coming, and yet when it really attacks a bird the latter often dies within a few hours. The author consequently does not believe that the bare legs and dull plumage associated with grouse disease always imply that the birds have the disease, but only that they are in a condition in which they can more easily take it, or have had and recovered from it. This view is supported by the fact that, after the last attack of grouse disease in Badenoch, it was noticed when the birds re-started to breed that the young ones were well feathered on the legs and the old birds were not. What had happened to those old grouse? Had they had the disease and recovered from it, or had they only had that predisposing indisposition that causes the leg feathers to fall off and the other feathers to look dull? If they had had the disease, then it is not as fatal as Dr. Klein’s experiments suggest. The chances are that tapeworm or any other parasites, or even prolonged wet summers or bad food, will predispose the grouse to the reception of bacilli, possibly by midge bites on bare legs conveying disease from the sick to the healthy. This view is supported by the fact that the grouse never get the disease, however bad their food and however bare their legs in the hard winter weather, but only when it is warm and damp and there are lots of midge flies.

It has often been said that all game birds and domestic poultry are subject to the same diseases, and it is frequently suggested that the grouse disease, pheasant disease, and fowl diseases are all one and the same. That is an extraordinary belief, because pheasant disease nearly always occurs when the foster-parents from the barn door remain perfectly healthy. These views have had a still further upset in the summer of 1906, by the fact that a large number of foster-mothers died of enteritis, but without any of the pheasants becoming sick. It is quite clear that the pheasant disease of the rearing-fields is as much a mystery as it was before pathological research began, and is one of those things that is waiting for investigation. How it is spread is not even known. Post-mortem examinations without bacteriological research are freely made, and opinions as freely offered, generally ending in a recommendation to keep fewer birds. This advice is very wisely not followed by those who want more, not less, sport. And the preservers have this in their favour, that pheasants increase in numbers every year in spite of disease. Game preservers are in these times well aware that opinions given on a mere inspection of the internal organs can neither lead to true knowledge of the cause of deaths nor even to wise suggestions of how infection may be avoided. It is not known whether the chicks catch the disease from the breath of already diseased birds, from foul feeding on excretatainted ground, or from inoculation by means of fleas or other vermin. Although these points could be set at rest in a week when disease breaks out, it never has been done. It seems more likely that, as in cramps, the disease bacillus is present in soils suitable for it, and not in others, or else that some soils favour the development of the diseases in the birds. The only way known to avoid either of these diseases is to avoid the ground on which they occur, but numbers of birds do not create either disease. The perfect health usually found on the game farms proves this. There they generally have as many pheasants on 100 acres as sportsmen expect on 10,000 acres. As with grouse, the greater the stocks the more healthy the birds seem to be.

Partridges are most attacked by a disease known as “the gapes.” Hand-reared birds can be dealt with more or less successfully by means of fumigation. Carbolic acid crystals are volatilised on a hot shovel within a closed coop containing the affected birds. However, this is a clumsy way of dealing with the matter, and the best plan is to move the birds that show signs of being troubled with the disorder to the woods, where they can get lots of insect food as it falls from the trees. This applies to both partridges and pheasants. In the wild state the former are most subjected to “gapes” when the weather is very hot and dry. It is not known how the worm that is the cause of the trouble gets into the air passages.

There is a large number of other diseases to which game birds are subject, but a preserver who can avoid those mentioned need not trouble about the others. That is the reason they are not mentioned in this work on Shooting.

But an additional word may perhaps be said on grouse disease. A Departmental Committee of Investigation has been formed by the late President of the Board of Agriculture to investigate the disease. One of its first acts was to issue a pamphlet to correspondents to show what had already been said and thought about the disease. None of these old faiths are in agreement with Dr. Klein’s conclusions as they stand, but it only needs one factor to be assumed to bring them into agreement, as will be seen by the following table:—

┌─────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │A list of supposed │A list of supposed causes of grouse disease │ │ causes of grouse │ that are in agreement with Dr. Klein’s │ │ disease that are in│ conclusions, provided subcutaneous injection│ │ disagreement with │ of the bacilli by an insect is │ │ Dr. Klein’s │ assumed—probably the midge fly. │ │ conclusions. │ │ ├─────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │Tapeworm. │Tapeworm. │ │Cobbold’s Strongylus.│Cobbold’s Strongylus. │ │Bad food. │Bad food. │ │Over stocking. │Bad water. │ │Bad water. │Wet warm weather. │ │Wet warm weather. │Bog or floe ground. │ │Bog or floe ground. │The first four acting by debility to │ │ │ impoverish the blood and the plumage, so as │ │ │ to allow the midge to get at the skin, │ │ │ especially of the legs. The last two acting │ │ │ by enabling the insects to breed. │ └─────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────┘

It may be remarked that it is no answer to say that tapeworm cannot be a cause of predisposition to disease, because it is always present. It is greatly more in evidence some years than in others. The author never in any other year than 1873 saw quantities of shot grouse from which tapeworms exuded in yards of entangled mass from the shot wounds of the dead birds. Then, however, they did so, and had to be withdrawn from the birds before the latter could be bagged. The birds could not have been left upon the moor, because the dogs would have gone back for them. Yet with all these worms the only evidence of disease was an absence of much leg feathering. The owner of Glenbuchat has been good enough to tell the author that disease broke out there in 1872 after the shooting season, but he never before heard of any disease in that year, and as a matter of fact the grouse at Aldourie, in Inverness-shire, not far away, bred well in 1873, and only were attacked by the disease later than the shooting season of that year. But even 1874, the great disease year, was by no means universally bad. That autumn they had a splendid crop of grouse in perfect health at Crossmount, in Perthshire. The Rannoch Lodge ground was only fair that year, but the author’s party there was credited in the Scotch papers with the record bag for that season, probably wrongly, as there was not one bird for five compared with the little moor of Crossmount. 1873 was very wet in the August and September shooting season, and the writer never before or since saw so many midges as in that season. That grouse disease does not attack in winter (although many grouse die then and in the spring of various complaints) also tends to prove that the bacilli must have an intermediate host that is not in evidence in the cold weather. Then the disease is not known in Ireland and in the Lews, where the climate is mild and damp and encouraging to midge flies. But there is really no place that the midge can attack a grouse as long as he is full feathered, and in the mild climate even if there were starvation there would not be bad food. But it may very well be that the bacilli do not exist in Ireland or the Lews, and until it is proved that they do exist there it is beside the mark to set aside the evidence to be had where they do exist, only because it does not conform to that of a place where they are unknown.

For some reason that the author is not aware of, the Field, which commissioned Dr. Klein’s investigations, seems to have thrown over his conclusions entirely. Without any remark upon the wisdom or otherwise of this course, it is necessary to show how thoroughly it disagrees with them. At random the author takes the issue of October 6th, 1906, and he finds therein these four references to grouse disease. At page 581 is stated that “pneumo-enteritis is the technical name of the grouse disease.” On page 591, Mr. W. B. Tegetmeier writes: “During the present year the number of grouse that I have seen affected by disease has been unusually small, not half a dozen from all parts of the kingdom. The extension of the disease to blackcock is an interesting fact that should be known. The disease appears to confine itself almost exclusively to gallinaceous birds.”

On the same page the Field says: “Partridges were practically exempt from pneumo-enteritis as long as they were allowed to breed naturally, but overcrowded on foul ground they will become as subject to it as pheasants.” And on page 592, in reference to pheasants it is said, “The birds died from very severe pneumo-enteritis.” On September 22nd, page 531, Mr. Tegetmeier has an article in which he seeks every means of discovering why foster-mothers have died of the disease and the pheasants have not died. Consequently, it is evident that the journal treats this disease as one and the same in all species of gallinaceous birds. But Dr. Klein said at page 38 of his book on grouse disease, “In pigeons and fowls the subcutaneous inoculation is not followed by any, not even a local, positive result; the animals remained lively and well.” In fact, Dr. Klein failed to give the disease he had discovered to fowls or any gallinaceous birds whatever, but he said, “The most striking results were obtained on the common bunting and the yellow-hammer, for the injection of a small drop of the broth culture into the leg is followed by fatal results.”

Obviously, if the Field is right now, Dr. Klein did not discover the grouse disease bacillus. And if he did discover it, any fowls dead from or sick with disease may at once be regarded as victims of something else; and other gallinaceous birds must be suspected in consequence of being refractory to the grouse disease.

The author’s belief is that Dr. Klein did discover the bacillus, although he failed to prove it, and that his experiments on buntings, fowls, and other creatures went to suggest that the grouse is not a natural host of the bacilli, that it or its virus becomes attenuated or weakened every time it passes through a grouse, but that, on the contrary, it becomes more virulent in passing through buntings and yellow-hammers. This was suggested by the weakness of the virulence from the bacilli cultivated from the diseased autumnal grouse after a severer spring outbreak, and it is also suggested by the fact that in such cases the grouse do not die rapidly, and that it is a slow disease from which perhaps some grouse recover; whereas they do not recover in the spring. The writer’s suggestion is, therefore, that when the bacillus is carried from grouse to grouse it may be weakened, but that in spring it is not originated in the grouse, but in some creature unknown, and possibly a migrant bird of the bunting, hammer, or finch families. The importance of finding this out, and testing the attenuation theory more thoroughly in live grouse, is obvious, for if it is true that the blood of successive grouse gradually weakens the bacilli or their virus, then it is clear that the safety of grouse will be the constant presence of some few diseased grouse on the moor.

The author only dwells on this aspect because it is not receiving as much attention as some others, which are constantly being discussed, and are therefore less necessary to mention.

At present thought is mostly in the contrary direction. But it is to be hoped and believed that the Commissioners will investigate every possible view from a scientific standpoint, and more important still, from a practical one. For instance, if on a disease affected moor grouse can be kept in health in a pen of midge-proof netting, we shall hardly need to know where the midge gets his poison, but shall be exceedingly likely to dry up his breeding-places and exterminate him as nearly as may be.

INDEX

Abbott, Mr., 184.

Accident to valuable dog, 104.