PREFACE 



I HAVE always had a great love for the solitude and 

 calm of the lone Scottish mountains, where a peace 

 and happiness are to be found unknown to the 

 dwellers in the plains. Here one seems to be apart 

 from the sorrows and anxieties of the world, and 

 the days I have spent among the Ptarmigan and 

 Golden Plover at a height of considerably more than 

 3,000 feet above sea level I shall always remember 

 as the happiest of my experience. What can be 

 more lovely than a mid-winter sunset from a dark, 

 lofty mountain, with many a snow wreath lingering 

 on its slopes ? As the sun sinks, the wide expanse 

 of hill and valley is lit up in the soft glow, and the 

 snow fields on the sister hills are changed from spot- 

 less white to a glorious rosy tinge, while the snow- 

 white Ptarmigan, wheeling across in the setting sun, 

 have their plumage transformed to pink as they 

 catch its rays. 



To obtain the photograph of the Ptarmigan on 

 her nest, I was on the hills from midnight till one 

 o'clock the next afternoon. 



I know the mountains at every season of 

 the year, but think that they are at their finest 

 during the month of June, when all Nature at 

 this height looks at her best, and the air is laden 

 with the scent of the mountain plants. 



In the following pages it has been my endeavour 

 to give an account of the lives and habits of the 

 best known of the mountain nesting birds. 



