MAY ON THE MOORS 73 



pairs of blackbacks breed ; not in company, as on Hindlee 

 Steel, but scattered singly over the mosses of that wild 

 fell, and of Blackaburn adjoining - . There is a little eerie 

 lough up there, on the boggy shores of which, or among 

 the sedges that fringe them, is established an extensive 

 colony of blackheads. The bigger gulls, however, nest 

 far apart — a mile or two away — quite separately, both 

 from their smaller cousins and from each other — only 

 one pair occupying each broad "moss." 



Dunlins also nest on these mosses, together with 

 curlews, plovers, teal, and mallard ; while a pair of merlins 

 were established (1905) on a heathery slope hard by. 



On a dry tussock, lay half-devoured eggs of grouse 

 and golden plover ; the depredator, in this instance, we 

 had reason to imagine, might have been a corby. 



Mischievous and destructive as the big gulls are (and 

 this year, on July 2nd, a pair of them mopped up a whole 

 brood of eleven young wild-duck close to my house), yet 

 I forgive them their trespasses solely for the sake of their 

 picturesque appearance. In Northumberland we have ex- 

 terminated everything big ; the soaring flight of buzzard 

 or kite will never again delight one's eye. There is 

 nothing left to us more imposing than this great gull. 

 We have him on the Borders — far inland — in every 

 month of the year, and — robber though he be — he fills 

 that void. As he sweeps to and fro across wastes and 

 waters on 4-foot pinions, with those cut-throat mandibles, 

 and his boldly-contrasted colours, he is a magnificent 

 object, and, with the heron, adds an element of stately 

 dignity to the bird-life of the moorland, which, without 

 them, would be lacking. Hence I would turn the blind 

 eye to his crimes- — unless, indeed, his numbers increased 

 quite unendurably. 



