The grouse in health and in disease : being the popular edition of the report of the committee of inquiry on grouse disease / edited by A.S. Leslie ; assited by A.E. Shipley.

  • Great Britain. Committee of Inquiry on Grouse Disease.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The grouse in health and in disease : being the popular edition of the report of the committee of inquiry on grouse disease / edited by A.S. Leslie ; assited by A.E. Shipley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    80/542 (page 50)
    May. June. feathers of the feet and legs, so that bareness or lack of feathers in April becomes a sign of health, and thickly feathered legs a sign of sickness ; this is the precise contrary of the proverbial saying that bare legs indicate disease ; though at other seasons the saying may be applicable. In May the preponderance of cock birds found dead, and therefore of skins of cock birds showing belated moult, is again a large one. The healthy cock is still in his much-worn winter plumage, but on the head and neck more feathers of the new autumn plumage have appeared (PI. v.). In June as a rule, the mortality amongst adult birds, due to Strongylosis, is coming to an end. Late in June the healthy cock Grouse can at last be said to have changed into his com- plete “ autumn plumage.” The winter plumage persists only on the abdomen and lower breast, on the actual chin which is blackish with a few white spots, and on the throat, where a few red feathers still remain. The moulting of the quills and tail feathers commences towards the end of the month. The rump and back are now completely covered with new black-centred feathers carrying broad-barred buff and black bands, and a few have a whitish terminal spot, similar to that found in the female. The head and neck, breast and throat, are now clothed in broad-barred buff and black feathers, quite distinct from the more chestnut and more finely black-marked plumage of the winter. It is impossible on seeing a series of the birds showing this distinctive change to avoid noticing how closely this autumn plumage of the cock approximates to the nesting plumage of the hen, but it has arrived in the cock just two months later than it is normally due in the hen—far too late to be a breeding plumage. It appears almost as though the pathological post- ponement of the moult, a postponement which is, after all, nothing but a sign and a symptom of disease, has gradually developed into a normal habit in the life of the bird, and one is led to think that this habitual disability in the cock Grouse, which results from Strongylosis during the nesting, courting, and breeding season (a disability which causes the death of