The Land of the Hills and the Glens 



country, were wonderfully clear. As the keeper — a keen 

 ornithologist — and I traversed the uneven ground of the 

 bog, a curlew, by her oft-repeated alarm calls, showed us 

 that she had a family somewhere in the neighbourhood — 

 an interesting discovery to us, for hitherto the curlew had 

 not been known to breed on the island. The heat was 

 intense, and many species of blood-sucking flies, some of 

 them resplendent in gorgeous hues, made things unpleasant. 

 Weeks of heat and drought had shrunken the lochans until 

 they had left a dark oozy rim around their shores, and over 

 the bogs one could to-day walk dryshod. 



Herring and lesser black-backed gulls were nesting on 

 the rocky knolls, and on the margins of the small lochs 

 were colonies of graceful common gulls. At length, sail- 

 ing in circles with the tribe of the gulls, but rather above 

 them, and showing much grace and power in their flight, 

 a pair of skua gulls passed overhead. 



And now, from the top of a knoll, one looked down 

 upon a level piece of boggy moorland, with a lochan in 

 the background on which the strong sunshine sparkled. 

 This was the haunt of the Arctic skua. Mingled with the 

 cries of the gull colonies which were nesting near, and 

 which we had disturbed, came call-notes far more shrill 

 and long-drawn, uttered by the skuas as they flew rest- 

 lessly round us. I think the skua gull, or "Croma rithe- 

 achar," as it is known in the Gaelic — is almost unique in 

 its habit of feigning injury in order to deceive the in- 

 truder while yet its eggs are freshly laid. Many birds 

 do this after the hatching of their young, and some 

 even when the eggs are hard set, but I can recall 

 no other bird which practises this deception so early in 

 its nesting. Both the cock and hen skuas w'ould circle 

 above their nest with apparent indifference, and then would 

 alight together on some knoll two or three hundred yards 

 away, or even farther, where they would stand beating 

 their wings helplessly as though wounded. Indeed, so 



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