96 BIRD-LIFE IN WEST-HIGHLAND PARISH 



absent ; but the discordant cry of his cousin, 

 the jay, is still to be heard in one or two 

 localities in the neighbourhood. It is surely a 

 pity that so bright and cheerful an ornament 

 of our woodlands as the jay should be ruthlessly 

 persecuted. His penchant for the eggs of other 

 birds must be admitted ; but, as he confines 

 himself almost entirely to wooded country, he 

 is harmless to grouse and other game birds of 

 the open ; and wild-nesting pheasants are, in 

 these days, really a negligible quantity. The 

 starling here, as elsewhere, is a quickly in- 

 creasing bird, and in reasonable numbers is to 

 be regarded as beneficial from the quantity of 

 noxious grubs and insects it consumes. One 

 wonders whether these western starlings have 

 spread to us from the immemorial colonies of 

 the northern islands, themselves most pro- 

 bably an over-spill from congested areas of 

 Scandinavia, or whether they are part of the 

 invading armies of the south. 



As the days lengthen on the approach of 

 spring, the weird cries of the owls are nightly 

 to be heard, answering each other, as it seems, 

 across the loch. The tawny owl is here, as in 

 most districts of Scotland, the commonest ; but 

 the long-eared owl and the barn owl are also 

 resident, the latter selecting the ruined walls of 



