POLTALLOCH 19 



water laziness and awkwardness are both at an 

 end, and the youngest birds can dive and swim 

 strongly and gracefully even where a wild sea is 

 breaking over sunken rocks. 



I have frequently had opportunities of watch- 

 ing a rarer visitor, the beautiful little grey 

 phalarope, which in shape and size greatly re- 

 sembles a sandpiper, but on the water sits and 

 swims like a duck, with its semi-webbed feet. 

 This pretty bird is peculiarly fearless of man- 

 kind ; and also deluded me on my first intro- 

 duction into the idea that it was wounded. I 

 was fishing in the Add, and saw my little friend 

 swimming about in some shallow water left by 

 the flood in a green meadow adjoining. I waded 

 after it, and tried to catch it : several times 

 nearly touching it with the landing-net before 

 it fluttered away a few yards. At last, however, 

 when it had had enough of the game, it gave 

 perfect proof of its being quite uninjured by 

 flying clean out of sight over the high hill of 

 Dunadd and disappearing. Since then I have 

 often got quite close to them and watched them 

 for a long time, and I am glad to say I have 

 never abused their confidence by taking their 

 lives. 



One specimen of a very rare bird, the brown 

 or red-breasted snipe (Macroramphus griseus), 

 was shot by my nephew, Harold Malcolm, in 

 1891. This bird is recorded twice over in 



