CHAPTER XXVIII 



THE NESTING OF THE RED-NECKED PHALAROPE 



ON certain of the Western Isles the red-necked phalarope 

 has its summer home. It is one of the last of the birds ot 

 passage to make its appearance, and spring has given place 

 to summer ere it arrives. During these days of June, days 

 when the afterglow shows red in the north-east throughout 

 the night for is not the sun above the horizon till well after 

 ten? these islands of the western ocean hold much charm. 

 The sea is blue; the hills of the mainland show faintly in 

 the haze, or, maybe, after a day of heat and thunder, when 

 the air is still and clear, they can be seen, sharp and distinct, 

 with black thunder-clouds enveloping their summits, while 

 on the islands the sun still shines, hot and clear. This island 

 of the phalarope, where I first learned to know it, lies well 

 out into the Atlantic. 



The island holds in its keeping many lochans. Of these 

 but two are large enough to have the name loch given to 

 them, and it is on the shores of the greater of these two 

 lochs that the phalarope has its home. Westwards the 

 Atlantic is scarcely a thousand yards distant, and when one 

 is near the loch, even in fine steady weather, the swell breaks 

 loud on this shore. 



The coming of the phalaropes to their island has never, 

 so far as I know, been marked, but the birds without doubt, 

 make their way northward over the Atlantic, and perhaps 

 halting a while, by the wild sea-girt rocks of Skerryvore 

 and Dubh Hirteach, whence they proceed to their far-distant 

 goal beyond the western horizon. 



I shall long remember one cloudless day of June, when I 

 saw for the first time the phalaropes on their native loch. I 



'53 



