ABSTRACT
THESE birds fly pressing together in a dense flock, and perch in high trees, mostly birch. They only fly down for breeding purposes, since they can find adequate sustenance in the treetops. When the hunters, or the country people to whom the land belongs, see the birds spread out over the fields, even though these are blanketed with snow, they set out to catch them as follows. They stick in the ground, rising slantwise above the snow, poles or staves eight to ten feet long, from the end of which hangs a snare, mobile at the slightest touch. For when these birds mate, they dance in a remarkable fashion, like the partridge when it scampers along, and so they fall into the traps and remain dangling there. 1 Whenever they notice one of their company hanging by a cord, the others fly up to rescue it, only to become themselves entangled in similar snares. There is another way of taking them, that is, to shoot them with arrows from under the cover of a horse (as I mentioned earlier in the section on capercailzies), so that they will be less suspicious of your designs. 2 During the mating season they never stop calling and chattering, always wanting to shout each other down, the males in particular, with the result that they can be heard through the length and breadth of the woods, and quite frequently betray their whereabouts through their melodiousness.
