450 THE MOOR AND THE LOCH. 



rounding each peak into a fresh bay, Macleod protested he 

 had never " gaen ower sae muckle water " without spying the 

 mysterious red-bill. At length my son asked for the tele- 

 scope, and on returning it, carelessly remarked, " There are a 

 couple of black guillemots." Macleod was alive in a moment 

 " That's the sea-pigeon." To satisfy him we rowed towards 

 the birds. One rose out of reach, and the other (a very dis- 

 tant shot) was dropped by the No. 4, its bill, to our boatman's 

 chagrin, black as ebony ! Unlike many of his superiors in 

 birth and culture, this poor Highlander's radiant freak of 

 fancy was, I am convinced, neither premeditated nor wilful. 



As the surf, in place of abating, was coming in stronger, we 

 gave up all hope of circling the island. A landing on it was 

 easily made, and we proceeded to the erne's rock. The alarm 

 shot only brought out some rock-birds, but the eagle, as Mac- 

 leod suspected, had forsaken her eyrie. 1 Within shot were 

 tier on tier, and rank on rank, of razor-bills, guillemots, coul- 

 ter-nebs, ranged like the defenders of a beleaguered fortress. 

 The crest of one stack of detached rock rising abruptly from 

 old ocean had never been trodden by human foot. Sunning 

 themselves on this turf, a colony of great black-backed gulls 

 lay, or rolled about, in heedless, conscious security. On the 

 sides were thousands of cliff-birds so shockingly tame that I 

 desired Macleod to pitch a few stones to try to enliven the 

 dormant mass. At the second throw he killed one, which 

 dropped into the yawning abyss, while only a few of its near- 

 est neighbours deigned to leave their perch. On looking into 

 the awful chasm, we distinctly perceived the large green 

 single egg on several of the ledges, but only one pair of eggs, 

 and these were half the size of the others, and whitish- 

 coloured. 



As we already possessed all the specimens we noticed on 

 and around Handa, the sail was soon hoisted for Scourie, and 



1 I am happy, however, to record that the erne hatched and reared her young 

 in the spring of 1877 on her Handa rock. 



