

POLTALLOCH 17 



during its period of convalescence. The bruised 

 talon was treated successfully by the keeper, and 

 when the patient had quite recovered he was 

 ordered to let him go. " What ! " said the keeper, 

 "are you not going to keep him in a cage?" 

 " Certainly not," said Poltalloch, " let him go at 

 once." Accordingly he was taken to Benan, and 

 sailed majestically out with the west wind which 

 was blowing strong, but he must have turned 

 south afterwards, for he spent some time on the 

 Achindarroch estate by the Crinan Canal, where 

 he was unmolested and protected. I can give no 

 account of his movements after he deserted those 

 quarters, but he probably escaped with his life, as 

 I should almost certainly have heard of it had he 

 been shot or trapped. 



The eagle owl has been more than once 

 accidentally trapped on the estate, where no owls 

 are intentionally interfered with, and many of the 

 smaller varieties are fairly common. I remember 

 one instance at least of a visit from the Great 

 Snowy Owl. The keeper coming back from 

 Macaskan, an island in Loch Craignish, where 

 he had been after an outlying deer, described to 

 me a large pure white owl which he saw rise from 

 a rock a short distance off the shore, and wing its 

 noiseless flight northwards, pursued and mobbed 

 by terns and gulls. No other bird the least 

 answers to the description of its size, colour, and 

 flight given to me by a fairly accurate observer. 



B 



