128 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



of the county particularly well adapted for them. Grouse never 

 seem to nourish really well in a mountainous country ; flat or un- 

 dulating ground, with hills sloping gradually down to the rivers, and 

 well intersected with convenient burns, being what suits them best. 

 The reason of this is partly that in a very mountainous country it 

 is very rare to get a sufficient depth of peat for the heather to grow 

 well in, the constant heavy floodings seemingly washing off all the 

 good soil. Even when the heather looks well in such places, it will 

 take seven or eight, or more, years, to grow again after burning, 

 whereas on good ground it would only take one or two years; 

 and generally a sort of rank coarse grass comes up after all. 

 From my own observations I find that heather in these mountainous 

 districts looks hard and sapless, but wherever you find a piece of 

 good sound heather, there the Grouse are. Good ground, too, absorbs 

 the wet much more quickly, and consequently the young birds are not 

 drowned so often as they are on the bad grounds, where the 

 water pours down every little runlet after each shower. Of course 

 these high hills are the very places for the Ptarmigan, which is 

 rare on the East Coast. Black Game are much more independent 

 of good heather : they like a mixture of heather, brackens, rushes, 

 and grass, and are fond of the vicinity of water, at least in the early 

 part of the season. They should, therefore, be numerous in the West 

 and in the East, where such combinations are found, but Grey-hens 

 are apparently very bad mothers, and a heavy shower of rain when 

 the birds are very young destroys numbers. 



Waders are numerous in such localities as suit them : Greenshanks, 

 Curlews, and Golden Plovers on the hill ; Lapwings and Redshanks 

 on the green flats so often met with along the burn- or river-sides. 

 The Greenshank is not a sociable bird, a pair here and there being 

 met with throughout the hills ; the Redshanks, on the contrary, are 

 sociable, that is to say, when you meet with one pair there are 

 generally one or two others not far off, at least such is my experience. 

 It is singular that the Dunlin should be so comparatively rare, but 

 it may be much commoner than I suppose, as it apparently likes a 

 very wet "flow" to breed in, and of these there were only two or 

 three in my neighbourhood, which I rarely visited during the 

 breeding season. There are only two places on the East Coast well 

 adapted for Waders in the winter; the first of these, the Little Ferry, 

 I have often visited, rarely seeing anything, however, but Oyster- 

 catchers and a very few Dunlins; the second place, the Dornoch Firth, 



