WILD SPORTS OF THE HIGHLANDS 



for a long time rather than go to their nests if people are 

 about the place. 



The peewits, who lay their eggs on the open fields with 

 scarcely any nest, always manage to choose a spot where 

 loose stones or other substances of the same colour as their 

 eggs are scattered about. The terns lay their eggs in the 

 same manner amongst the shingle and gravel. So do the 

 ring-dottrel, the oyster-catcher, and several other birds of 

 the same description; all of them selecting spots where the 

 gravel resembles their eggs in size and colour. Without these 

 precautions, thegreycrowsandotheregg-eatingbirds would 

 leave but few to be hatched. 



The larger birds, the size of whose nests does not admit 

 of their concealment, generally take someprecautionstoadd 

 to their safety. A raven, who builds in a tree, invariably fixes 

 on the one that is most difficult to climb. She takes up her 

 abode in one whose large size and smooth trunk, devoid of 

 branches, set at defiance the utmost efforts of the most ex- 

 pert climbers of the village school. When she builds on a 

 cliff, she fixes on a niche protected by some projection of 

 the rock from all attacks both from above and below, at the 

 same time choosing the most inaccessible part of the preci- 

 pice. The falcon and eagle do the same. The magpie seems 

 to depend more on the fortification of brambles and thorns 

 with which she surrounds her nest than to the situation 

 which she fixes upon. There is one kind of swallow which 

 breeds very frequently about the caves and rocks on the 

 sea-shore here. It is almost impossible to distinguish the 

 nest of this bird, owing to her choosing some inequality of 

 the rock to hide the outline of her building, which is com- 



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