104 BIRD-LIFE IN WEST-HIGHLAND PARISH 



the country one of our rapidly-increasing birds 

 is surely also one of the handsomest. His 

 pure white forehead, black throat and gorget, 

 red breast and twinkling rusty tail-feathers, 

 must catch the eye even of the least observant. 

 Widespread over all Europe, it is found from 

 Nubia and Senegal up to the Arctic Sea with 

 us, of course, a summer migrant. Another very 

 beautiful bird, the stonechat, in whose nuptial 

 plumage the same black, white and red are 

 differently contrasted, is a resident species, but 

 only sparsely distributed, as is also the case 

 with its congener, the whinchat. 



The wheatear is one of our earliest spring 

 visitors, flitting along the roadsides with its 

 familiar call-note. The natives of these parts 

 believe that they winter in cairns or in the 

 crevices of stone dykes ; and have been known 

 to be somewhat indignant if any doubt were 

 cast upon the assertion that they themselves 

 had found them thus hibernating ; but, after all, 

 Gilbert White himself had a shrewd suspicion 

 that the swallows slept away the winter in some 

 unknown hiding-place. 



First of its family to arrive in spring is the 

 willow warbler ; should the weather be bleak 

 and cold it may be with us for days unnoticed, 

 for under these conditions its song will not be 



