200 FIELD NOTES FOR THE YEAR. 



Spynie belonging principally to this gentleman's family, he 

 preserves the place strictly ; and I do not know so successful 

 a wild-fowl shooter successful I mean in a gentlemanly and 

 sportsmanlike manner and with what I term fair shooting. 

 With due deference to the followers of this sport, I cannot 

 include under that denomination the punt and swivel-gun 

 system. Amongst other objections to this kind of sport is 

 the vast number of birds maimed, wounded, and left to 

 perish miserably, or to feed crows and other vermin. Not 

 even Colonel Hawker's amusing work on the subject recon- 

 ciles me to this (proh pudor !) his favourite branch of sport. 



In the snow I constantly see the tracks of weasels and 

 stoats going for considerable distances along the edges of open 

 ditches and streams, where they search not only for any birds 

 which may be roosting on the grassy banks of the ditches, 

 but also for eels and whatever fish they can make prey of. 



The otters, too, puzzled by the accumulation of ice and 

 frozen snow on the shallows, and about the mouth of the 

 river, go for miles up any open ditch they can find ; turning 

 up the unfrozen mud in search of eels, and then rolling on 

 the snow to clean themselves. 



There are few animals whose scent is so attractive to dogs 

 of all kinds as the otter ; but it requires that they should 

 have great experience in order to be sure of finding an otter, 

 or of following with any certainty when started, so strange 

 and well concealed are the nooks and corners of broken 

 banks and roots under which it lies, or takes refuge when 

 hunted. 



My old keeper has great delight in the pursuit of otters, 

 and continually neglects his more legitimate duties for the 

 sake of getting a midnight shot at one of these animals. 

 Having carefully determined on the way from which the 

 wind blows, and made himself sure that no eddy of air can 

 carry his own scent towards the stream, the old man sits 

 well concealed under a projecting bank near some shallow 

 ford, where he expects the otter will appear on his way up 

 or down the burn. This plan seldom fails, and he not 

 unfrequently makes his appearance in the morning with a 

 dead otter in his hand, the result of many hours of patient 

 watching in a winter's night, of which the disordered and 

 somewhat bemudded appearance of his habiliments bears 

 further witness. I cannot plead guilty of ever sending him 

 on these expeditions. In the first place I have no very 



