66 TOUR IN SUTHERLANDSHIRE. 



their light, and so high was the cliff. The guillemots seldom 

 came to the top, but the razor-bills and puffins, particularly 

 the latter, came fearlessly close to me. Indeed the puffins 

 seemed to have the most entire confidence in my peaceable 

 intentions, and frequently alighted so near me, that I 

 might have knocked them down with a walking-stick. 

 Sitting on a stone, they examined rue most curiously, 

 twisting their oddly-shaped heads to the right and left, as if 

 to be sure of my identity. In some parts of the rocks there 

 were great collections of kittiwakes' nests. These birds, un- 

 like the guillemots, &c., construct a good-sized receptacle of 

 weeds and grass for their egg?. In the midst of all this con- 

 fusion and Babel of birds a pair of peregrine falcons had 

 their nests, and on my approach they dashed about amongst 

 the other birds, uttering loud cries of alarm and anger. 

 Towards the east end of the island was the nest of the 

 white-tailed eagle. The old birds flew far away immediately, 

 and I only occasionally saw them as they soared high in the 

 air. The nest was so completely under a shelf of rock that 

 nothing but the ends of the outer sticks could be seen. I 

 had not time to make any decided trial to get at it, as I had 

 promised to be with Mr. M'lvor at six o'clock ; and my 

 intention of visiting the place the next day was frustrated. 



The rocks are curiously indented by the sea ; in one place 

 the waves have cut a kind of deep crevice the whole height 

 of the cliffs, for a good distance into the island, through the 

 narrow entrance of which the swell was roaring with a noise 

 like thunder. At another part there is an island, or stack, 

 as it is called, within a stone's throw of the mainland, but 

 quite isolated. It is in the shape of a sugar-loaf, with a flat 

 summit of perhaps twenty yards across. The top was 

 covered with green herbage, and swarmed with birds of 

 different kinds. Amongst them were great numbers of 

 black-backed sea-gulls, both the greater and the lesser. 



In the quieter parts of the cliffs were rock-pigeons and 

 cormorants ; neither of these birds seemed inclined to 

 associate much with the crowd of sea-fowl which filled the 

 greatest part of the rocks. Their stench alone might drive 

 away so delicate a bird as a rock-pigeon, and bad as this was 

 now, by the time they had hatched and reared their young it 

 must be much worse. 



The rest of the party having joined me, and the time 

 running short, I left the island in order to fulfil my promise 



