36 A WINTER DAY IN CAITHNESS 



of wild geese passes overhead with much clangour, 

 hardly out of gunshot : of half a score golden plover 

 whisking low along the marsh, only one utters a single 

 note of unspeakable melancholy ; a single, inauspicious 

 cormorant wings a business-like flight towards the lochs 

 of Strathmore, where, as he knows, is good store of 

 eels ; the only cheerful creatures abroad are chirruping 

 bevies of snow-buntings a bird of which no degree of 

 cold or storm seems able to lower the spirits or abate the 

 activity. Even the rooks become listless and depressed 

 under stress of weather. 



There is, however, one condition of climate which 

 even the snow-buntings cannot withstand. As long as 

 a few acres of grass and rushes remain bare of snow, 

 so long can these cheerful little fowl pick up their 

 frugal fare of small seeds. But when deep snow wraps 

 field and fell in uniform pallor, they must move else- 

 where, driven, not by cold, but by hunger. Thus it 

 came to pass early in February 1895, that almost 

 every snow-bunting had left Caithness. Only two or 

 three pairs of crafty old birds might be seen still 

 haunting the stackyards and threshing-mills. 



Where had they gone ? I found an answer the 

 very day I returned to London. A paragraph in the 

 morning paper informed me that large quantities of 

 snow-buntings had been seen about Highgate, where, 

 of course, scores of them were captured by birdcatchers. 

 Never more might they see the iron cliffs of Hoy; 

 never more in the broadening light of spring cross the 

 wide sea to their loved nesting-places in Arctic lands. 



