CHAPTER XIX 



VANISHING BIRDS 



This is a sad subject to take up, but, alas ! I fear it 

 cannot be disputed that birds of many, if not of most, 

 kinds are far less numerous now on the west coast of 

 Ross-shire than they were fifty or sixty years ago. 



Let me start with the game birds. The Black Grouse 

 is a bird of the past as far as this part of the country is 

 concerned. Even on my small property I used to kill 

 from twenty to thirty brace of Black Game in a season. 

 In 1915, as far as I know, only one pair remained, but the 

 old Grey-hen was shot by accident, and the cock, which 

 was a very old acquaintance, disappeared. When I 

 bought this estate there had been no cultivation of the 

 arable land for some fifty years at least, and there was 

 not a vestige of wood on the 12,000 acres, except one small 

 patch of low, scrubby birch. Now all the arable land 

 is cultivated, and there are a number of plantations 

 dotted over the property of from fifty to three or four 

 years' growth, which anyone would have thought ought 

 to have encouraged Black Game, but even in parts of 

 Argyll, which a few years ago was swarming with them, 

 there are now comparatively few. I know of one place 

 in that country where, in 1914, 250 Black-cock were 

 killed, and in 1916 the total bag of Black Game was one 

 Black-cock. Along the shores of Loch Maree my mother 



258 



