184 FIELD-STUDIES OF RARER BIRDS 



us. For although the nest (behind an ash strug- 

 gling for existence on the rock-face) is more than 

 half way down a bluff fully 150 ft. in height, there 

 is only one bad place to negotiate, and that at the 

 very start. Then all is plain sailing, just a stiff 

 slope of heather and wood-rush and a clamber 

 along a long shelf, and here we are at the nest. 

 The keeper was right : those patches were eggs 

 palpably deserted all white except for a few dark 

 red spots. Their owner must, of course, have 

 fallen on evil times, poisoned possibly, trapped 

 perhaps, destroyed somehow certainly. Sad to tell, 

 in some districts Eagles are still ruthlessly harried; 

 we hear of one locality where no fewer than nine 

 were killed between an April and a July. All the 

 same a good many still survive; the wonder is any 

 survive at all. 



A really stiff four miles now bears us from the 

 glen to the shoulder of that mountain we first came 

 from. Its summit is shrouded in shadowy mist, 

 but the quite sweet song of a Snow-Bunting 

 amply recompenses us for the hidden view, and 

 before, lower down, the alarm-cry of a Ring Ouzel 

 tells us that one of these moorland Blackbirds has 

 already returned to his Highland home for the 

 summer. Just here we are rather too low for 

 Ptarmigan, rarely seen alive below the 2,000 ft. 

 limit. 



Descending the far shoulder an Eagle's thin- 

 drawn, squealing yelp shrills out suddenly from 



