94 THE GOSHAWK. . ■ 



blended loveliness of mountain, loch and river, rock and glen 

 (for its size), is not surpassed in the world ; where, if the nominal 

 proprietors have the sheep, the grouse, and the deer, the nation 

 has lost the true proprietors of the bens and glens — the High- 

 landers, the eagles, the falcons, and the hawks, through mistaken 

 if not unwise policy ; for it is questionable if the extirpation of 

 so-called " vermin " — human as well as feathered — has increased 

 those they wish to propagate. The goshawk is still found in the 

 Orkneys, where it breeds on the sea cliffs. It used to breed in 

 the forest of Eothiemurchus, and on the wooded banks of the 

 Dee. To show how ruthlessly birds of prey are destroyed — in a 

 paragraph as far back as 1858, headed " The last of the Pennan 

 Falcon Hawks," the Scotsman says : — 



" Four magnificent falcon hawks, which the people in the district affirm 

 have for upwards of sixty years had their eyries and nursed their broods in the 

 cliffs of Pennan, have now been exterminated, with their young, by Mr 

 Mitchell, gamekeeper, Auchmedden. Numerous fruitless attempts have 

 been made to shoot them, but Mr Mitchell, with assistants, has ' done for 

 them ' at last. When their young were hatched he took two traps and was 

 lowered down the cliffs by a rope 40 fathoms long, and at night set the traps 

 at one of the nests. Next morning the female was trapped, and by night the 

 male and the young ones were destroyed. The same plan was taken with 

 the other pair. Each nest had four young ones — in all twelve hawks destroyed. 

 The female in the second eyrie measured 4-8 inches between the tips of the 

 wings. Her upper mandible was overgrown, and the under one was turned 

 round to one side like a ram's horn, showing that she must have been very 

 old. The four old birds and two of the young have been neatly stuffed. In 

 and around the eyries were an immense number of legs and wings of 

 grouse and partridge. Mr Mitchell might have left one pair as living 

 specimens." 



So say I, for a more systematic piece of heartlessness can 

 scarcely be imagined, as if Mature had made a mistake in making 

 her birds of prey to be thus exterminated. 



The only instance I know of a goshawk being found near St 

 Andrews was in the spring of 1842, when a "big white hawk"" 

 was seen for some weeks flying about Kemback wood, near 

 Dura Den, a wooded district about six miles from St Andrews. 

 Several people tried to shoot it ; it was at last winged, and, after 

 a fierce struggle captured, and kept in an old parrot's cage for 

 several weeks, fed with young rabbits and birds ; but the cage 

 being too small, broke all the feathers of its long tail and dis- 

 figured the handsome bird so much that the man who shot 

 it gave it away. As a drowning man is said to clutch at a 

 straw, I am glad to clutch at this morsel of fact, and set the 

 goshawk down amongst our St Andrews birds, on the principle 

 that I would call a guinea mine if I found it in my pocket. 



