5 8 SOUTHERN ESTUARIES 



few days, disappears, and is seen no more till in the 

 early days of the following spring it renews its melan- 

 choly pilgrimage. Another pair have nested in the 

 woods near Loch Morlaich, at a few miles' distance, 

 but the solitary osprey of Rothiemurchus has not 

 yet found a partner for his home on the ruined 

 tower. 



Doubtless the Zoological Society's informants are 

 correct in saying that there exist only three eyries 

 which have been continuously inhabited. But there is 

 good reason to believe that the fishing-hawks have not 

 left the country, but have only retired from their 

 natural eyries on the lakes to the deep and inaccessible 

 fir-woods which now cover so much of the once treeless 

 north. Mr. Booth, who travelled from loch to loch, 

 and visited all the eyries best known by tradition on 

 the lakes, found them all deserted. He then explored 

 the dense pine-forests which grow on the steep hill- 

 sides or marshy lower ground. " It was necessary," he 

 writes, " to force a way through a tangled growth of 

 gigantic heather, entwined in places with matted bushes 

 of juniper or bog-myrtle, while here and there waving 

 bogs of green and treacherous moss, intersected by 

 stagnant pools or streams, blocked the way. The 

 atmosphere was stifling, screened from every breath of 

 wind ; and clouds of poisonous flies and midges buzzed 

 in myriads round one's head." There, in the largest 

 pines, he found the new homes of the ospreys, which, 

 like the golden-eagles, are protected by the quiet of the 

 great preserves. On some of the larger estates, two or 



