86 MISS CONSTANCE A. HINXMAN ON 
THE BIRD-LIFE OF THE SPEY VALLEY. 
By Miss Constance A. HINXMAN. 
(Read before the Society on 4th February 1897, and considered to be of suffi- 
cient importance to justify its publication in the Society’s Zransactions. ) 
THe Avifauna—or Bird-Life—of any district, depends, in 
a very great degree, upon its physical features and character- 
istics. This is, of course, obvious, in its more general appli- 
cation, to the. most casual observer, who will not expect to 
find birds of the moorland and mountain among the 
cultivated lowlands, and who will be surprised to see, on his 
first visit to the Highlands in spring-time, birds, which had 
always been associated in his mind with the sea-shore (such 
as the sea-gull and oyster-catcher), very much at home in 
quite different surroundings. But beyond this general 
application of the clearly-marked division between mountain 
and valley, moorland and cultivated ground, the close 
observer will at once recognise the influence which even 
slight differences of soil and vegetation, and the presence or 
absence of wood or water in any district, exercise upon the 
abundance and variety of its bird-life. For this reason, 
it will be well to begin with a short account of the area 
under consideration. 
The basin of the Spey, that is, the country drained by the 
main river and its tributaries, comprises an area of about 2000 
square miles in extent. A great part of this area is high 
mountain ground, and includes the northern and western por- 
tions of the Cairngorm range; the hills of Gaick; the moun- 
tains round the head of Loch Ericht to the summit of the pass of 
Drumouchter; and the whole of the Monadhliath range south 
of the Findhorn watershed. To these succeed the rolling 
moorlands of Banffshire and Elgin, which fall gradually 
northwards towards the sea, until, in the lower part of its 
course, the river drains the flat plains and fertile corn-lands 
of the Laigh of Moray. 
The actual source of the Spey is usually considered to be 
Loch Spey, a lonely mountain tarn whose waters are swelled 
by the streams that flow off the hills that lie between the 
