The Scottish Naturalist. 57 



of the Black Wood by the loch side, and that an old keeper of 

 Struan's told him that he had often seen these water eagles dart 

 down from a great height, and catch the trout in the loch. 

 From the minute description Mr Stewart gives me, I am well satis- 

 fied that these birds were no other than the true Sea Eagle, and 

 not the Osprey. He further tells me that one year there was 

 a pair of what he describes as " light blue eagles, just as near 

 the colour of the Wood Pigeon as can be," which had a nest in an 

 old poplar-tree on an island in Loch Lydon, and that when the 

 eaglets were nearly fledged, they were taken and pegged down in 

 a solitary part of Rannoch Moor, where they were fed by the 

 parents. The old birds were afterwards trapped, but most unfor- 

 tunately were not preserved. When the young eagles were ready 

 for an eagle-house they were both sent to Scone Palace. One of 

 these birds, which lived for many years there, and was afterwards 

 accidentally poisoned, I had frequent opportunities of examin- 

 ing ; this was doubtless a true Haliaetus albicilia, but the whole 

 plumage was of a whitish colour, and it was evidently an albino. 

 Many birds, from certain constitutional causes, attain a bluish, 

 whitish, or even pure white plumage ; but I am not aware that 

 there is any record of this in the Sea Eagle. What may be con- 

 sidered singular in this instance, is not that the young birds were 

 each of a light colour, but that the parent birds should have been 

 exactly of the same bluish ash or dove-coloured plumage. The 

 Common Buzzard is the only one of our raptorial species in which, 

 as far as I am aM^are, there are any great variations of colour in 

 the plumage other than that of the regular changes according to 

 age, and which thus exhibit variations subject to no fixed law. 



3. Pandion haliaetus, Cuv. (Osprey.) 



The Osprey, once, no doubt, a denizen of all our larger lochs 

 and streams, may now, from its wanton destruction, be looked 

 upon as only an occasional visitant. It is said to have bred regu- 

 larly in former times on Loch Rannoch, and probably had its 

 eyrie also on Loch Lydon. Mr Malloch, bird-stuffer, Perth, tells 

 me that a fine specimen of this species has been killed lately on 

 Loch Tay. 



4. BuTEO VULGARIS, Bcchst. (Commou Buzzard.) 



This bird, formerly so abundant in many of our Highland dis- 

 tricts, is now, like most of our beautiful raptores, thanks to strych- 

 nine and pole -traps, become so rare, that were it not for the 



