Summer in the Western Highlands 



on the high grounds on this day. Common gulls, herring 

 gulls, black-backed gulls all passed overhead, and it seems 

 noteworthy that any ptarmigan is able to preserve her eggs or 

 young intact when so many enemies are abroad. Once a 

 golden eagle soared past me not many yards away, seeming 

 incongruous among the company of sea-birds, and later I 

 saw it mobbed by a gull and some species of hawk. 



Plant life of the hills suffered from the continuance of the 

 high and cold wind. The cushion pink (Silene acaulis) did 

 not bloom before mid-June, and at that time even the violets 

 were still in flower on the higher ground. 



On June 15 a pair of wood warblers had baby young in 

 an oak wood by a burn-side, and about this time a family 

 of dippers left their nest in the cleft of a rock overhanging 

 a waterfall. Red-breasted mergansers the latest of the 

 duck tribe to nest commenced to brood about the 15th, and 

 on one small island I counted three nests. 



Right up to the end of June curlew continued to make 

 use of their musical vibrating cry, and on June 20, a day 

 of mist and gloom, I heard them calling more strongly 

 and wildly than I ever remember. And there are few cries 

 so full of pathos and feeling, and the spirit of the wild 

 places, as the call of the curlew. 



2. JULY 



THE cold northerly type of weather experienced almost 

 continuously throughout June was again prevalent during 

 the first fortnight of July, but after the i7th of the month 

 winds from a southerly quarter prevailed, with some very 

 warm weather from the 2ist to the 28th. 



Perhaps the most noticeable feature of bird life during 

 the month was the complete disappearance of the terns from 

 islands where last season they nested in their hundreds. 

 Their absence is to be regretted, for of an evening com- 



195 



