however, about all those bears, which malicious tongues reported
he had missed, and which according to the same good authority
exceeded the number he had shot.
" But what sort of a fellow is this big, old bird, you are speaking
about ? " I asked.
"Til tell you all about him," said the captain quickly, as we
started on our way for the dairy. He was apparently afraid that
this curt, ill-timed question of mine would, after the short ac-
quaintance I had with Peter, create a suspicion in his mind and
probably silence him altogether. " I'll tell you about him," con-
tinued the captain, " there is an old capercailzie cock on this pairing
ground, which has become the talk of the whole parish, — a sort of
a goblin-bird in fact. The sportsmen about here call him the
' bleater,* for instead of sitting quiet on his branch and playing,
he flies often about between the top of the fir-trees, bleating like a
goat. Not before this performance is over does he settle down to
play, and commence gobbling and snapping his beak. Well, that
kind of playing, there's little sense in, and nobody can come within
shot of him. He plays us, how^ever, still oftener another trick, which
is still worse ; he sits quietly and plays, and he commences his
gobbling, but when he ought to begin his snapping, he flies to
another tree. If anybody by chance happens to hit him, the shot
has no effect. Our friend Peter here, has shot at him both with
salt and silver, but although the feathers flew out, he didn't seem
to take any more notice of the shot than if the charge had been a
blank one. The next morning he played away as fast as ever and
out of tune as usual."
" You might as well shoot at a stone," said Peter, with the
decisive tone of one fully convinced. "I came across him once,"
he continued, " when he was playing down on the main road to
Skaug ; there he sat in the middle of the road with a lot of hens
around him, — I counted seven, and there were more round about in
the w^ood, for I heard them clucking and calling behind every bush.
The hens on the ground ran around him, stretched out their necks,
trailed their wings along the ground and showed themselves off* for
him, but he sat on the ground and preened his feathers, and made
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72
A Day with the Capercailzies.