HISTORY OF THE LOCH AN EILEIN OSPREYS 153 



loch. Wolley says in his " Ootheca Wolleyana " that he 

 refused, "considering my position there . . . the more 

 so as I suspected the proprietress protected the birds, and I 

 have been since assured that there was a man appointed on 

 purpose to take care of them." Dunbar's visit on this occasion 

 was at 3 A.M., and in a snowstorm. 



There is some confusion in the records of the Loch Morlich 

 nesting and harrying of this year. Wolley certainly had one 

 egg from Loch Morlich, got by a shepherd, and sent to 

 Wolley apparently by Dunbar's brother or cousin, but Harvie- 

 Brown's accounts leave it doubtful whether, besides this, 

 Dunbar also sent to Wolley eggs, or even two clutches of 

 eggs from Loch Morlich. 



In this year a new lodge was built at Loch Morlich 

 against the old one. 



1852. Dunbar made his fifth and last harrying of the 

 Loch an Eilein nest, getting three eggs, and sending them 

 to Wolley. He went to the nest at night ; Wolley writes, 

 "At 11.35 P.M., very dark, and no moon. Had cramp in 

 return, and was hauled out by his cousin," who had accom- 

 panied him. Dunbar wrote to Wolley, " The cock bird flew 

 away before I reached the island ; and after I climbed up 

 to the top of the ruin, and was just at the nest, I put out 

 my hand to catch the hen, but when she felt me she gave 

 a loud scream, and flew away also." 



Gordon-Cumming also robbed the nest this same year, 

 and this severe treatment probably deterred the Ospreys 

 from returning the next year. 



Wolley also received a single egg this year from Dunbar's 

 brother William, but there is no record of where it was obtained. 



1853-62. There is no record for these years. 



1863. Peter Anderson, the joint-author of the classic 

 Guide to the Highlands, in his " Memoranda of an 

 Excursion to the Grampians and Strathspey in July 1863," 

 published in the Cairngorm Club Journal 'in July 1903, writes 

 thus of Loch an Eilein Castle : " The little islet, with the most 

 picturesque tree-filled shell of its old castle, the walls 

 tenanted by a couple of small eagles, which to a day every 

 year 1st to 3rd April return to hatch their brood in their 

 li u 



