THE BIRDS OF IONA AND MULL. 219 



himself in a still more horrible spot, and apparently ready to alight on 

 your gun-barrel as you level it over a breastwork of wave-polished 

 rock at (say) a party of golden eyes riding buoyant as corks just out- 

 side the broken water. I picked up one rock pipit, recently killed, that 

 was cream-coloured, so much so that my boat-mates declared I had 

 discovered a dead canary bird. Did his unusual colour attract the 

 attention of some other bird and so lead to his death ? The hoodie 

 crows which flock in such numbers to feed at ebb must be most 

 uiiamiable companions for these poor little pipits of the rock. 1 



THK RAVEN. 



Gaelic, Fitheach, which gives name to several places, probably from being the 

 site of a raven's nest. Graigan am JV ich. The raven's rock was the slogan 

 or war-cry of the MacDonnels. 



Though the ravens are not very numerous, yet a day can scarcely 

 be spent upon the moors, or even sailing among the 



" Isles that gem 

 Old Ocean's purple diadem," 



clustering round the west coast of Mull, without at least hearing the 

 hoarse bark of a pair of ravens flying high up in the air. On a calm 

 day you hear the whistle of their stiff quill feathers each time they 

 strike the air, as they sail slowly along at a great height, and no doubt 

 carefully observant of everything within ken of their bold cunning 

 eyes, far below and extending far around. Gloak ! gloak ! the leader 

 hoarsely cries from time to time ; and gloak ! gloak ! his consort 

 replies, in tones a little softened by greater distance, and so they glide 

 away out of sight and hearing into mere black specks, bound on a 

 predatory cruise to look after young lambs on the lower haunches of 

 Ben Mor. The old Vikings could not have adopted a more significant 

 emblem than this bold ravener, not only on account of his instinctive 

 love of blood and plunder, but also for his wonderful hardiness and 

 contempt for the extremes of weather and climate. I have seen him 

 buffeting against a Hebridean gale of wind in full swing, and braving 

 the terrors of a Canadian winter snowstorm, when no other fowl showed 

 a feather acting up to the maxims of the Norsemen, "never to strike 

 sail, blow high or blow low, and never to surrender till they had re- 



1 Albinos are constantly persecuted by members of their own species even 

 unto death. ED. 



