VANISHING BIRDS 31 



VANISHING BIRDS, AND BIRDS THAT HAVE 

 ALREADY VANISHED, ON THE WEST COAST 

 OF ROSS-SHIRE. 



By Osgood H. Mackenzie. 



Tins is a sad subject to take up, but alas I fear it cannot be 

 disputed that birds of many, if not of most, kinds are far 

 less numerous here now than they were fifty or sixty years 

 ago. 



Starting with the game birds, the Black Grouse is a bird 

 of the past as far as this part of the country is concerned. 

 Even on this small property I used to kill from 20 to 30 

 brace of Black-game in a season. Last year (as far as we 

 know) only one pair remained the old Grey-hen was shot 

 by accident and the cock (which was a very old acquaint- 

 ance) disappeared. When I bought this estate there had 

 been no cultivation of the arable land for some fifty years at 

 least, and there was not a vestige of wood on the 12,000 

 acres except one small patch of low, scrubby birch. Now 

 all the arable land is cultivated, and there are a number of 

 plantations dotted over the property of from fifty to three or 

 four years' growth, which anyone would have thought ought 

 to have encouraged Black-game, but even in parts of Argyll, 

 which a few years ago was swarming with them, there are 

 now comparatively few. I know of one place in that county 

 where, in 19 14, 250 Blackcocks were killed, and this year the 

 total bag of Black-game was one Blackcock. Along the 

 shores of Loch Maree my mother once counted 60 Black- 

 cocks on the stooks of a very small field, and the old farmer, 

 to whom the patch of oats belonged, told her he had counted 

 100 the previous evening; the keeper on that beat told me 

 quite lately, that along the whole Loch side (a stretch of 

 country of from 12 to 14 miles) he only knows of one 

 Blackcock. 



When I was a small boy in the fifties, I used to follow 

 the head-keeper whose duty it was to provide game for 

 the larder, and on the low ground round the head of Loch 



