THE GOLDEN EAGLE 7 



commanded in his flight, yet every bird remained quite 

 motionless, crouching low against the hill until the eagle 

 had disappeared from view. Then, somewhat to my 

 surprise, the ptarmigan rose together in a body, and 

 rapidly winged their way in the opposite direction to that 

 taken by the eagle. They evidently had fears that the 

 great bird would return, and that on his return they 

 might not escape so easily as on the first occasion. Later 

 on in this same day, as the last rays of the afterglow 

 were brightening the western sky, I saw outlined against 

 the light a large pack of ptarmigan making their way 

 northwards, with the speed of an express train, over the 

 slopes of Beinn Mheadhoin. The time had long passed 

 when, under ordinary conditions, they would have made 

 themselves comfortable for the night, and I can only 

 imagine that a belated eagle, in quest of his supper, 

 was the cause of this hurried migration in the deepening 

 gloom. 



A mid-October evening in the wild glens has a par- 

 ticular charm which no other season of the year can give. 

 On every side one hears the roaring of the stags — hoarse 

 bellowings which fill the corries and re-echo from hill to 

 hill. When we saw the fugitive ptarmigan my friend and 

 I were still a number of miles from our base, and as we 

 tramped on in the darkness the phantom-like forms of 

 big stags with their attendant hinds hurried across the 

 strath before us. Two stags there were which from their 

 deep and powerful voices I took to be the lords of that 

 glen. One of the beasts was on the hillside above us to 

 our left, while the other was on the flat to our right. Both 

 stags had been sending across repeated challenges as we 

 neared their territory. The one on the left I knew, by the 

 peculiar hoarseness of his roarings, to be a splendid 

 " royal " which had annexed to himself a couple of score 

 of hinds, but the beast on the right was a stranger to me. 



