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In the tract of country between Coulin and Loch 

 Maree, on the north, are some of the most precipitous 

 mountains of Ross Shire, and there numerous Golden 

 Eagles find a congenial home. This noble bird has 

 benefited not a little by the increase of land devoted to 

 deer, and sportsmen may even find it advantageous to 

 have Eagles about, while one cannot wonder at pro- 

 prietors being proud to show the eyries to their 

 friends or point out the birds themselves, sailing about 

 over the skyline or hunting over the high moorlands. 

 The ordinary food of Eagles in a deer forest are the 

 Blue Hares, or Mountain Hares as they are commonly 

 called, and the Ptarmigan, both remnants of our 

 Alpine fauna. Grouse also, where they occur in the 

 forest ground, or conveniently near it, may contribute 

 to the Eagles' larder, and it is in these matters that the 

 bird of prey renders a service to the sportsman. 



When a deer stalker has decided on the stag he 

 wishes to shoot, a thing he may do a mile away, he 

 has to find out as far as he can that no other animals 

 are in the way of his stalk, as if they are, and he does 

 not know it, they may give the alarm and the sports- 

 man may not get within half a mile of his quarry. 

 Deer, other than those he wants, are easily seen, but 

 not so the game birds, which are gifted with remark- 

 able powers of concealment, and will lie close till the 

 sportsman is within gunshot and then rise with a whirr 

 of wings, and an indignant note of alarm, to let the 

 deer and everything else within hearing know of the 

 presence of the intruder. Thus it is that the Eagles, 

 or any other predaceous animals, are rather welcome 

 than otherwise, as they help to keep down birds that 

 in a deer forest are out of place. Where moorlands 

 occur amidst the mountains, and the deer keep to their 

 own ground, and the Grouse to theirs, the latter are as 

 welcome as their four-footed neighbours. This happy 

 state of aflfairs existed at Coulin, where, right opposite 



