214 IN CORROUR FOREST 



strange choice of an eyrie. Instead of building on one 

 the great and ancient pines in the heart of the wood 

 seven miles long, these fish falcons have selected a 

 couple of puny, wind- warped young trees on the most 

 exposed headland projecting into the loch. Here are 

 two eyries, constructed on stems hardly fit to bear 

 their weight. The birds have left the strath for the 

 season, as is their custom in winter ; but if they escape 

 the myriad boobies who, gun in hand, infest- our land, 

 they will return without fail to the haunts where they 

 have nested since a time before history began to be 

 written. 



LI 



A forest yes, but not such a scene as the term con- 

 in corrour jures in the mind of a southerner. From 

 where I lie in the September sunshine, high 

 on the shoulder of Beinn Bhreach, some 3000 feet 

 above sea-level, my eyes travel over a vast range of 

 crests, ridges, peaks the brown moor of Rannoch 

 seamed with silver streams and set with gleaming 

 lochs a range that extends from the cone of Schie- 

 hallion on the south to the dome of Ben Nevis on the 

 north. Much of this district by far the greater part 

 of it indeed is ' forest ' in a Highland sense ; yet, from 

 this point, at least, not a single tree may be discerned, 

 be it not a few stunted birch and rowan, clinging to the 

 scarped hill on the far shore of Loch Ossian. ' Forest,' 

 in short, means ground reserved for the noblest of 



