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Updated: June 9, 2025
While occupied in passing my portmanteau through the prying and unutterably dirty hands of the custom-house officials I was accosted by a man dressed in the garb of a Tyrolese mountaineer short leathern breeches reaching to the knee, gray stockings, heavy hobnailed shoes, a nondescript species of jacket of the roughest frieze, and a battered hat adorned with two or three feathers of the capercailzie and a plume of the royal eagle.
A broad black leather girdle clasped his muscular form, while over all was worn a short green coat. On his head he wore a low-crowned, broad-brimmed Tyrolean hat, black in color, and ornamented with green ribbons and with the feathers of the capercailzie.
A snipe rose suddenly, and began to call out; a capercailzie lofted all at once, with a great rush of winged bulk, above the snow-bound forest; and a white hare slid, like a wraith of the winter, down a silent forest aisle. Then came the White Wolf of the Frozen Wastes, the terror of the blizzard, ghost-like, enormous, and swift.
No youths could set a snare more deftly or hurl a stone more surely, and there was much bird life for them to seek. The bustard fed in the vast nut forests, the capercailzie was proud upon the moors, where the heath-cock was as jaunty, and the willow grouse and partridge were wise in covert to avoid the hungry snowy owl.
And at the same time, the old story goes, were great birds, far taller than a man, who fed where now the bustards and the capercailzie are. And these tales I do not believe, though I have seen bones washed from the riversides and hillsides by the rains which must have come from creatures different from those we meet now in the forests or the waters.
L. Lloyd, 'Game Birds of Sweden, 1867, pp. 22, 79, on the capercailzie and black-cock. Generally the males try to drive away or kill their rivals before they pair. It does not, however, appear that the females invariably prefer the victorious males. I have indeed been assured by Dr.
The male widow-bird, remarkable for his caudal plumes, certainly seems to be a polygamist. 'The Ibis, vol. iii. 1861, p. 133, on the Progne Widow-bird. See also on the Vidua axillaris, ibid. vol. ii. 1860, p. 211. On the polygamy of the Capercailzie and Great Bustard, see L. Lloyd, 'Game Birds of Sweden, 1867, pp. 19, and 182.
Godfrey was as fortunate as he had been before, shooting three capercailzie and nineteen grouse; while Luka brought down with his arrows four capercailzie, which he found sitting on stunted trees. On their way back to the boat they collected a great quantity of eggs, and came upon a rabbit warren. "Do not shoot," Luka said, as Godfrey cocked his gun, "it will frighten them all into their holes.
The most striking object was a great stuffed bird that stood in a glass-case before the window a capercailzie shot by Quarrier long ago in Norway, and presented to his brother-in-law. Tobias settled himself in a chair, and kicked a coal from the bars of the grate. "Tom is very strong against religious fanaticism," he said, laughing. "I have to pull him up now and then.
She may not have drifted to the shore yet, though I do not think she can be far off; still it is as well to give her plenty of time. At any rate we can shoot some birds, so the time won't be lost." Having made a fair bag and been absent from the canoe for five hours they returned, and after cutting up a capercailzie and grilling it over the fire, they got the boat into the water and started.
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