120 BIRDS OF THE WEST OF SCOTLAND. 



often associates with other birds, it would require a practised eye 

 to detect it, the striking colours of black and yellow on the head 

 and neck becoming altered in some specimens to a dingy brown. 

 Young birds and females are still more likely to be overlooked, so 

 that it is quite possible the Shore Lark may have been even in 

 Montagu's time an erratic wanderer to our shores. Whatever 

 neglect it may have hitherto experienced, it is not likely that in 

 future the poor bird will be allowed to come and go in peace. 



THE SKYLARK. 



A LAUD A A EVEN SIS. 

 Uiseag. 



" Bird of the wilderness, 

 Blithesome and cumberleas." 



HAD the Ettrick Shepherd lived in the Outer Hebrides, he might 

 have added a few lines more to his beautiful verses on the Skylark 

 to make the story of its desert life complete. Writing from the 

 inspiration given him by the moors and green mountains of 

 Selkirkshire the scenes of his many natural pictures he has 

 left a sketch of the Scottish laverock such as cannot be surpassed. 

 But while singing its praises, he probably never dreamt of its 

 being found in districts sterner in their aspect than the wilderness 

 of heather blooms, over which he bids his 



" Musical cherub, soar, singing away ! " 



and he would doubtless have gazed with something like surprise 

 had he seen it soaring above the black peat-mosses and sterile 

 tracts of North Uist, where, from a laverock's height, nothing is 

 seen but a waste of rocks and water. Let any one climb Ben Eval, 

 and survey the eastern portion of the island, where the lark is a 

 well known object in the summer sky, and he cannot fail to 

 wonder where even that little bird can find a spot to dwell upon. 

 A more extraordinary view there is perhaps not to be seen in 

 Britain. Cut into the most extravagantly tortuous shapes, the 

 land and waters are so intermingled, that it seems impossible to 

 believe in the existence of houses, fields, roads, or, indeed, any- 

 thing of human construction in the whole island. Hundreds 



