CHAPTEE XX. 



Along the Shore after Birds An Otter in pursuit of a Fish Tame Otter at Bridge of Tilt : 

 Employed in Fishing His hatred of all sorts of Birds" The Otter and Fox," a transla- 

 tion from the Gaelic. 



NOVEMBER closed with a week of the most delightful weather one 

 could wish for at this season [Decemher 1870], cold, but crisp and 

 clear ; nor has December thus far shown any tendency to excep- 

 tional " rampaging " either, though come it must, if we are not 

 much mistaken, and in a style we fear that will cause it to be 

 remembered. Woodcocks, fieldfares, redwing thrushes, snow 

 buntings, and starlings are at this moment more plentiful than we 

 ever saw them before ; while Arctic sea-fowl in great numbers 

 crowd our creeks and bays, and immense flocks of grallatores, 

 curlews, gedwits, purrs, dunlins, and oyster-catchers, may be 

 seen all along our shores diligently attending the sea margin as 

 the tide recedes, or with weird and wild scream urging their 

 eccentric flights from an exhausted sandbank in indefatigable search 

 of " fresh fields and pastures new." Creeping among the rocks 

 on the back of Cuilchenna Point, a quiet, sequestered shore, 

 seldom visited by anybody but ourselves at this season, one evening 

 last week, watching a pair of web-feet that we finally decided to 

 be smews, a species of merganser, we were unexpectedly treated to 

 an exhibition of aquatic feats that we had never before seen 

 equalled, and that we thought no animal, biped or quadruped, 

 could accomplish in an element not properly its own. Squatted 

 on the beach behind two huge boulders, a narrow opening be- 

 tween which enabled us to look seawards, and to see without being 



