194 FIELD NOTES FOR THE YEAR. 



A flock of seals playing and fighting on a sandbank is one 

 of the drollest sights which I know in this country. Their 

 uncouth cries and movements are unlike anything else. In 

 the Dornoch Firth and near Tain there are still great 

 numbers of them, and every fine day they are in large flocks 

 on the sandbanks ; but near this part of the country they 

 have been very much thinned off, and scarcely any are killed 

 excepting by myself. My keeper tells ine, that when he was 

 a boy, their number was very great, and that the inhabitants 

 of the place could always kill as many as they wanted for 

 oil, and for their skins, picking out the largest of the herds, 

 and sparing the smaller ones; but, alas! cheap guns and 

 salmon fisheries have combined to make them scarce. For- 

 merly, also, in the pools left by the sea within the old bar of 

 Firidhorn, numbers of seals were left at every ebb of the tide, 

 and the farmers occasionally went down and killed a few to 

 supply themselves with oil for the winter. 



Any unusual number of wild fowl in the bay at this 

 season generally prognosticates stormy weather or snow. On 

 the 27th I saw nearly fifty wild swans swimming and flying 

 between this place and the town of Findhoru ; and some 

 large flocks of geese were passing over to the south. The 

 next day the ground was covered with snow, an unusual 

 occurrence at this season. Of these swans one flock of six 

 located themselves in the fresh-water lakes between this and 

 Nairn, and the rest wended their way to the south. The 

 Icelanders hail the appearance of the wild swan in the same 

 manner as we do that of the cuckoo or swallow ; it being 

 with them the foreteller of spring and genial weather ; whilst 

 here they are connected in our minds with storms and snow- 

 clad fields. 



The Loch of Spynie is another established wintering place 

 of the wild swan. A few years ago great numbers remained 

 both in that loch and in Loch Lee during the whole winter. 

 I know of no other fresh-water lakes in this country where 

 they now appear regularly. Near Invergordon numbers of 

 swans feed with other wild fowl on the sea-grass. 



Late in the evening the golden plovers come in consider- 

 able numbers to the bare grass fields to feed during the 

 night ; but when the ground is hardened by frost, they resort 

 to the sands at the ebb-tide, both by "night and day. Whilst 

 the tide is high, these birds fly up to the hills, resting on 

 those places where the heather is short ; and their instinct 



